I used my downtime at work to write this. I blame Nyxe and her goat spree.

—

When John got home from the surgery, Sherlock was standing on the coffee table, his dressing gown hanging off his furry shoulders and his hooves stamping at the array of forensics magazines open beneath him.

“BORED!” he announced, his voice bleating slightly over the “O.”
 
John noticed the smiley face that had been kicked into the plaster by the door and dropped his head into his hands. “Sherlock, you can’t go destroying our flat whenever you don’t have a case!”
 
“But I’m bored!” his flatmate said through clenched teeth. His horizontal pupils narrowed, making his pale eyes even more intense than usual. “I need a case, John! My brain’s going to rot!”
 
“Well, then answer your emails or—I don’t know, take up a new hobby!”
 
“And what—hobby—would you have me take up?” Sherlock glared at him, his ears flat against his head.
 
John couldn’t think of any offhand. Hand. Hands were required for a lot of hobbies, and being a goat, Sherlock didn’t have those. Maybe he could set up his voice recognition software to work with a computer game? Or get one of those large floor keyboards and learn to play music? Except hopping around on a keyboard would probably be one of those activities Sherlock deemed “undignified.” He worked so hard to be taken seriously as a consulting detective, and if anyone at NSY caught wind of him prancing about on an oversized toy, he might as well be just another adorable Youtube goat.
 
“Never mind,” John said, shaking his head. “Have you eaten?”

Sherlock let out a low grumble in his throat, and when John gave him a more serious look, he rolled his eyes and said, “Mrs. Hudson said she’d bring up some pellets.”

“Good,” John said, gesturing with the plastic bag in his hand, “because I only got enough takeaway for me.”

“Curry,” Sherlock breathed, his head dipping toward the bag.

“No,” John said, tapping him sharply on the nose. “That’s people food.”

“Damn your ‘people food,’ I want curry!”

“You’ve been doing so well, Sherlock. And you remember how gassy you got the last time you had curry.”

His flatmate harumphed.
There was a perfunctory knock at the door frame, and Mrs. Hudson strode in with a tea tray. “Good evening, boys! How are we today?”

“Bored,” Sherlock said murderously.

“Fine, thank you,” John answered, smiling as Mrs. Hudson set the tea tray on the edge of the coffee table.

Mrs. Hudson took one look at the hay scattered about the kitchen and tsked. “Oh, Sherlock, the mess you’ve made.”

“Sorry,” John said for him, because Sherlock had his nose in a teacup and wouldn’t apologize anyway. “I’ll sweep that up after dinner.”

“Thank you, dear, I—” Mrs. Hudson paused, catching sight of the smiley face by the door. “What’ve you done to my bloody wall?”

Sherlock licked the last of the tea from his nose innocently.

“This is coming out of your rent, young man!” she said, storming out of the flat. “And don’t expect me to sneak you biscuits anytime soon!”

“Bah.” Sherlock’s ears flicked back, and he flounced over onto the sofa, burying his face between the cushions.

John sighed, sitting down beside him, and picked up the mug full of goat food pellets that Mrs. Hudson had left. He shook it, rattling the pellets inside, and Sherlock’s head shot up.

“Exactly what do you think you are doing?” Sherlock said, his voice dripping with disdain.

“Enticing you to eat?” John said, shrugging.

Sherlock stood up, his hooves digging deep into the cushions. “And what exactly tells you that rattling a container of food pellets will ‘entice me’ to eat? Do you think this is a petting zoo? Am I your pet, John? Is that what you think of me?”

His tone sounded almost hurt, and for a moment, John was frozen, staring into his flatmate’s weird goat eyes and wondering if this was what he’d been warned about.

“He’s not your friend,” Sally Donovan had told him that first night, when they’d been called in on the serial suicides case and Sherlock had hopped around the flat like a kid at Christmas. “Goats don’t have friends. One day you’ll be standing around a body and realize Sherlock Holmes is eating the trousers right off your leg.” She’d said it with the grim matter-of-factness of someone who’d experienced it herself.

John raised his hands. “Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. I’ve just never lived with someone who was—”

“What?” Sherlock demanded, lowering his head to show his horns. “A freak?”

“A mad genius farm animal,” John finished. “It’s a lot to get used to. I’m trying.”

Sherlock raised his head. He regarded John cautiously, his ears flicking back and forth, and looked away. “You’re doing fine.”

John leaned back on the sofa and put his feet up on the already dirty magazines. He shook the mug of pellets again, this time with a smirk. “Will you eat?”

Sherlock gave the mug a distasteful look but settled in beside him anyway. “Scritches,” he murmured as he buried his nose in the mug.

John rested his hand on the top of Sherlock’s head and scratched him between the horns.

“Acceptable,” came the muffled response from inside the mug.

John turned on the telly, and they had dinner and watched Doctor Who, and Sherlock didn’t kick any more holes in the wall for the rest of the night. Maybe Donovan had been right, he thought, draping a blanket around his flatmate’s shoulders when he’d finally fallen asleep - maybe goats didn’t have friends. But maybe that was because no one had ever tried before.