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The front door opens, and John walks in with arms full of shopping. He pauses at the scene laid in front of him: Sherlock on his hands and knees on the floor in front of the couch, a chewed book in his hand, Gladstone sitting and panting before him.
Sherlock stares at Gladstone. Gladstone blinks at Sherlock and licks his chops.
“This,” Sherlock says crossly, holding his now-ruined copy of The Poisons and Antidotes Sourcebook, “this is not a chew toy.”
Gladstone licks Sherlock instead this time. Sherlock glares. Gladstone pants.
“John,” Sherlock says. “Control your animal.”
John smiles and heads into the kitchen.
“John!”
John ignores him, as well as his subsequent calls for help, and puts the shopping away. When he returns to the living room, Gladstone is sitting on Sherlock’s chest, doggy-grin on his face. Sherlock has slobber all over his shirt and face. He looks positively disgusted.
“Dammit, John!”
“He weighs less than two stone,” John says, rolling his eyes and plopping into his chair. Gladstone obediently gets off Sherlock and goes to sit at his feet. “If you really wanted you could have gotten him off you.”
Sherlock sniffs huffily and takes his shirt off. He throws it at John’s head.
“You get upset when I pick him up.”
“You tried to use an unknown substance on him!” John exclaims, pulling the wet shirt off his face. Sherlock stares at him blankly, as if he’s not quite sure what’s wrong with that.
“Would you have preferred I test the hallucinogen on you?” John just raises an eyebrow. “You’re even more upset when I test things on myself!”
John snorts and pulls the paper off the end table. “Go put a shirt on,” he says. “You’ll catch cold.”
“It’s August.”
“Summer cold.”
Sherlock snorts and retreats to his room. He returns in a new button-up and grabs his coat off the hook.
“Where are you going?” John asks.
“Bookshop,” Sherlock replies. “I need a new copy.”
“I can—“ John starts, because he does feel a bit bad that Sherlock’s property was destroyed (even if Sherlock never feels bad for destroying his).
Sherlock waves him off. “Second revision is out, anyway. Don’t wait up.”
He doesn’t return before John goes to bed, and John has to wonder if he’s more upset than he’s letting on.
He wakes up the next morning, goes downstairs, and is surprised that Sherlock is sitting on the couch, reading the morning paper, Gladstone happily in his lap with a huge rawhide bone in his mouth.
Sherlock, apparently hearing John’s footfalls, looks up from the paper briefly. “If he touches my shoes, I’m testing some of those poisons and antidotes on him,” he says without venom.
John smiles to himself. “You won’t,” he says.
Sherlock makes a noncommittal noise. John gets a coffee and sits in his chair, expecting Gladstone to come over to him.
Gladstone does not move from his spot, which is apparently comfortable. John smiles and picks up the front page.
Sherlock’s phone rings Lestrade’s ringtone.
“Let me finish my coffee before we run out of here,” John says.
“Of course,” Sherlock says as he picks the phone up. John takes that to mean ‘get a thermos’, so he does. He feels human enough to be a buffer for Sherlock, at least.
“What is it, then?” John asks as Sherlock ends the call.
“Triple murder,” Sherlock says. “Locked door case.” He grins up at John, eyes sparking. John can’t help grinning back.
“Crate,” he says.
Gladstone looks at him sadly and carries his bone—which is, John notes, almost as big as he is—to his crate. John closes him in.
Sherlock doesn’t even comment on the dog-hair on his coat on their way to the crime scene. John decides to count it as a win.