Disclaimer: I do not own the TV show Sherlock. The BBC does, though. If you haven't seen it, I'd recomend watching it. It's excellent.
'What is it?' asked young Sherlock Holmes when he was handed the glass bowl full of water and a small shimmery animal.
'It's a goldfish,' answered their butler, who had always cared for the boy and was the only one who seemed to.
'What does it do?' asked the forever inquisitive little boy.
'Well, Sherlock, it doesn't do much of anything. It swims around and looks pretty. But I've heard they can be quite affectionate pets. You will have to feed it, though,' the butler said, pulling the little jar of goldfish flakes from his pocket and handing it to Sherlock.
Sherlock had never seen a fish before, or if he had, he didn't remember it. But it was a very nice and thoughtful birthday present. His mummy had probably bought him another tie. Oh, how he hated ties.
'Thank you,' whispered Sherlock.
'You're very welcome, Sherlock,' said the butler, before walking off to answer the door.
Sherlock wondered for a moment who was at the door until he decided it was one of his father's 'friends'. They weren't really Mr. Holmes' friends; he couldn't care less about them. He only had them because they had connections. This particular one had a powerful position in the British government, which Mycroft, Sherlock's brother, hoped to have one day. Sherlock found politics dull, as all little boys do, so he went up to his bedroom and put his new fish on the dresser with its food next to it.
The fish began swimming around and opening and closing its tiny mouth. Sherlock stared at it. It continued doing this.
'Are you hungry?' Sherlock whispered to it.
The fish kept opening its mouth. Sherlock picked up the fish food and sprinkled it on the surface of the water. The fish swam up and started eating the food.
'You'll need a name,' Sherlock decided. 'I can't keep calling you 'the fish'. Hmm.'
Sherlock thought for a moment.
'I'll call you 79. It's the atomic number of gold, you know, and the atomic mass is too complicated to constantly say. It would be really tedious to call you 196.96657.'
79 seemed to like his name. He swam around contentedly for a moment before hovering in the middle.
Hours later, when Sherlock got into bed, he looked at 79. His last thought before falling asleep was that it was a good day to turn seven.
A/N: Bit of an abrupt ending there, I know. There will be another chapter. Just one other. I didn't want this to be a one-shot, so it will be two-shot. Oh, by the way, I bought some Swedish Fish. Yum. That may have been my inspiration here. Inspired by candy... Weird. Well, aaaaanyway, hope you liked my first ever Sherlock fan-fic, even though it was completely random and pointless.