Velociraptors were not meant to type.
Sherlock cocked his head, glaring at the screen, trying to determine what resolution might be most effective. The blinking cursor was tripping all sorts of attack instincts, and black text on a white background was definitely not optimal.
He had set up this experiment with some forethought, of course. He was in John's room, where Mrs. Hudson almost never ventured, with John's laptop on the bed, sitting on top of two stacks of books for proper airflow. Recognizing the fragility of laptop keyboards, Sherlock had procured a cheap external keyboard that would at least allow him to test his accuracy with claw-typing.
It wouldn't be too difficult to master. It had taken him less than an hour to learn to text at a respectable speed, and that was on a much smaller keyboard.
He hadn't anticipated the screen contrast issue. He could shift back, make the appropriate changes, and resume his velociraptor form, but he'd forgotten to lay in a supply of food. And John wouldn't be back from the pub for...
He blinked at the time display in the lower right corner of the screen. Too blurry to read. With an irritated huff, he turned to the bedside clock.
Two hours? Preposterous. What the hell was Sherlock supposed to do for two hours?
Well, he could at least type, even if he couldn't read what he typed. The spacebar might be problematic without proper thumbs — velociraptors, like many modern animals, had dewclaws — but he suspected he could manage well enough.
One keypress at a time, he wrote out instructions for John to set the monitor resolution to max, and to change the document to white text on black.
Did John know how to do that? His computer skills were strictly limited to rudimentary blogging, checking email, and watching pornography. The nuances of productivity software were probably beyond him.
It took almost fifteen minutes for Sherlock to type out the instructions, thankfully from memory. He couldn't add screenshots, but hopefully John would understand things like how to find the File menu.
Pack leader, my arse, Sherlock thought, though a little shiver went through him as he remembered John enforcing his status. A human biting a velociraptor should never have that sort of effect.
Sherlock pushed his head close to the monitor and tried to read what he'd typed, but there was no hope. And that blinking cursor was making him twitch.
His stomach reminded him that he'd changed, but hadn't yet eaten. He'd spent all morning considering how best to set up the laptop and acquiring the keyboard, so he'd skipped breakfast and lunch.
He growled at himself for not bringing food along, back when he'd had thumbs and wouldn't scare Mrs. Hudson half to death if caught on the stairs.
Wonderful. If he changed back now, he might well go into hypoglycemic shock. He'd estimated that the physiological effect of the change was similar to going thirty-six to forty-eight hours without food. Sherlock had eaten dinner the previous night (and the thought of the very tasty curry in the fridge wasn't helping) but that had been about twenty-two hours ago.
This could be problematic.
Sherlock was also bored.
Thinking to send John a message to come home at once, Sherlock had attempted to use keyboard shortcuts to get into gmail, but he apparently lacked the accuracy to actually reach any useful sites. Now he had fifteen browser tabs open — eight with pornography, two news sites (if one considered the Daily Mail 'news'), Twitter (even at this resolution, he recognized the blue and white icon), some other site with a slate blue background, and .uk.
Finally surrendering to the inevitable, Sherlock threw himself on the floor. John would come home to find an unconscious or dead were-velociraptor on the floor in his bedroom. Sherlock wondered if he'd revert to human form or if Mycroft would end up burying Sherlock wearing feathers. That was more appealing than being buried in a suit, at least.
He hoped John would keep his skull, for company. If he survived this, he'd have to write out a will.
Normally, the first few hours of boredom would pass quickly enough (or at least not with agonizing slowness) if Sherlock closed his eyes and lost himself in his mind.
Apparently, though, Velociraptors were no more built for introspective mind-palace-meanderings than they were for typing.
He rolled over onto his side and curiously nudged his head under the duvet that had been neatly spread over the sheets, until Sherlock had set up the laptop. There was a huge duffel bag stuffed near the foot of the bed — one of those big cylindrical military things. Beside it was an almost equally huge rectangular knapsack that looked like it was built on a frame or something.
Remnants of John's military past — something he never really discussed, even now.
Curiosity lit a fire in Sherlock's brain as he regarded his salvation from boredom. His forelimbs were useless for this sort of thing, but he had perfectly good hind legs. He twisted around, trying not to smack his tail painfully into the furniture, and reached with one leg. If he was very, very careful, he could feel around... with his toe-claws...
Got it!
He hooked the fabric of the duffel bag and extended his claws, hoping they were like normal claws — sharp at the point but blunt on what would be, on a knife, the inner cutting edge. Once he had the bag hooked, it took some work to actually get it out from under the bed, but really, it wasn't as if he had anything else to do with his time.
Rudely, the bag was closed by a complicated sort of hook-and-eye-ring assembly that Sherlock couldn't easily manipulate without thumbs. He finally settled for biting through the fabric and using his serrated teeth to tear it open. He tried to be neat about it, but apparently velociraptors had instincts when it came to destruction, and before he knew it, he was shaking the duffel bag as if he were trying to snap the neck of a prey animal.
When he finally regained control of himself, the damage was done. He sat back on his haunches, looking at the ripped duffel bag and the pieces of uniform that had flown out of the tear across the top. He'd have to come up with something brilliant to explain this, but that was what he did.
For now, at least he had something to do.
"Sherlock."
The growl snapped Sherlock awake in a flurry of too many limbs and a tail he'd forgotten and there was a T-shirt on his head? He thrashed and laundry flew, surrounding him with the smell of John, and he finally got his feet under himself, only to slip as he trod on a T-shirt and skidded, tractionless on the polished wood floor that John actually bothered to mop once every two weeks.
He went down in a heap and peered up at John, who was glaring fiercely down at him. The glare was entirely understandable, based solely upon first impressions, but all John had to do was to see — to observe — to realize that everything that had happened in the room was a perfectly logical progression from the very rational, logical impulse to experiment with typing in velociraptor-form.
And forgetting food. But fortunately, John wasn't observant enough to notice that.
"You changed," John said, stepping past Sherlock and looking around at the clothing that was everywhere. It looked like the aftermath of a laundry-blizzard, and Sherlock felt a tiny stirring of something that he assumed was guilt. He blamed it on his pack-instinct and pushed it aside.
"And you forgot food," John said when he reached the far side of the room.
Oh. So he was that observant.
Sherlock whined.
Pointedly, John reached down to pick up a pair of boxers. "I'll go see what we have so you don't starve to death. That should give you plenty of time to come up with a truly brilliant explanation for why you were rolling around in my —"
He stopped, only then noticing the laptop on the bed. It had long since gone to sleep, but it was obvious even to John that Sherlock had put it there. John looked from the laptop to Sherlock and asked, "You weren't on Skype like that, were you?"
Sherlock hissed, hoping this was a sign that John's sense of humor had returned. Surely it wasn't a serious question. John rolled his eyes, swiped the touchpad to wake the laptop, and leaned over to examine the screen.
Hungry, Sherlock nudged at John's back, thinking this was the wrong time to be playing with technology, especially given how inept John was when faced with anything more complicated than Google. (Sherlock still had nightmares of trying to explain the difference between Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Chrome.)
"Okay, scratch that," John said, sounding just a bit dazed. He stepped back from the bed and looked sternly at Sherlock. "I'm going to find food, and you can come up with an explanation for playing with my boxers and looking at porn. And it had damned well better be a good one," he warned, leaving the room, firmly closing the door behind himself.