I think the Cat is on Fire!
Howlynn
Chapter Management Chapter 10: Opposable Thumbs
Summary: The Sherlocks battle for prime tactical advantage and there are no winners.
Opposable Thumbs
John returned from the market and listened to the story. He didn't yell at her, but she could see how Sherlock somehow had put her in the position of bad person in John's eyes again. Mary seethes quietly as John paces and worries about his adult friend off on a pouting walk in broad daylight. She went to bed early, but hears him softly leave the flat, no doubt to go searching for Sherlock.
The two of them return, laughing and speaking in animated whispers before she drifts to sleep. She is awakened by crashing sounds.
John walks into the sitting room at two in the morning, because Mary insisted sleepily that if she had to separate the two Sherlocks at this hour, to make them stop wrecking their flat, that he better plan on calling Lestrade. There would be bodies.
John enters to find Sherlock, the human, standing with one foot on the arm of the sofa and the other on the now collapsed end table. He is holding their house-hold broom like a javelin and he has somehow sharpened the end of the wood handle into a vicious looking spike. Sherlock, the cat, scrambles up the back of John's leather chair and licks his paw innocently.
Sherlock held out his arm, displaying four slight claw marks on his flesh as if they were gunshot wounds. "He drew first blood, John. I am the innocent party," he says lowering the broom as if he'd only planned to use it to sweep up the remains of the side table.
John sees more claw marks on his chair. Mary would go on about that. The cat hisses at his namesake and Sherlock hisses back.
"He tried to suffocate me. He is evil, I tell you," Sherlock says.
"Right. Was that while you were sharpening the jousting spear?" John asks.
"He tried to run me off the couch."
"Well, it is his couch, and you might consider using the guest room. Where you could close the door, and if you are bored, there is furniture to glue back together."
Sherlock's eyes widened. "It is Yellow in there. I hate yellow. It gives me a headache."
"Not if the lights are out. It's night, and if you shutter your eyes by closing them, you will not catch a headache from the color. Not just us now, you know. My wife works. It is not too much to expect that she might be allowed one night's rest."
"I will still know it's a yellow room and…"
"But it has a door, which will keep the cat and you in separate locations. Which is my primary goal."
Sherlock just stood there leaning on his makeshift harpoon and looked betrayed and miserable. John sighed, and picked up the cat without another word and carried him to the yellow room, closed the door and yanked down the covers. He shuts out the light and crawls in the bed.
Both Sherlocks thought they won. The stupid one got the sofa and the annoying one spent the night purring in John's ear, in perfect acceptance of the new improved arrangements.
John's plate became the next battle ground. Both Sherlocks vied constantly to mark sharing food with John as their territory. Between that and Mary's constant disapproving glare, John didn't have much appetite.
One morning the smoke alarms sounded, John rushed to get up, stubbed his toe on a chair in panic, stood up only to suck in a lung full of reek that smelled significantly like burning hair. By the time he recovers and limps into the sitting room, he stops short when he finds Sherlock sitting in his pajamas and dressing gown reading the paper. He is not alarmed by the earsplitting shriek of the smoke detector, nor concerned with the billows of choking grey smoke floating thickly just above his head.
"What's burning?" John asked, shouting over the cacophony, opening the door and banging the smoke alarms down with the pointy broom-handle. He shuts the noisy contraptions off and narrows his eyes at his friend. "Sherlock! What is burning?"
Sherlock looks up from his paper and mildly replies, "Don't know. May be the cat."
"Sherlock! Did you..." John shouts in horror then his eyes go wide as his voice cracks and falls silent in shock.
At hearing his name, the feline stalked into the room and cried to John. 'I have been disfigured' and collapsed in misery. His head and paws look fine as does his tail. The rest of him appeared to have been shaved.
John lifts him into his arms surveying the damage. "You shaved my cat? Why? Why would you do such a thing? This is completely unacceptable, do you hear me? I can't believe you would do this to an innocent little cat. My cat. Who I love and who is now naked."
"Well I couldn't experiment with it on him, could I? I didn't want to upset you as it seems you set such cop in his opinion. I knew you would find something to be cross about. You like him better than me."
"At this exact moment in time, that would not be inaccurate. If he shaves you, then I will be angry with him."
"No opposable thumbs. Can't hold a razor," Sherlock says smugly.
"Ah, but he can open a door. His fur will be back long before you live that down," John reminds him.
John continues to sleep in the guest room and have his ear purred in rather than chewed off by Mary. Mary is on his not-happy-with list these days, especially after she had laughed. She yelled at John for the burnt cat-hair smell in the flat and turned around and laughed at his poor cat.
The flat on Baker is nearly finished with Mycroft's refurbishment. It will soon be ready for Sherlock to again occupy and honestly everyone is counting the days.