Penultimate chapter! Or is it... Love and thanks to all as always :)

Y is for Yelling

After she had rung Mycroft, Mrs Holmes rang Molly to say that her idiot sons were fine, and that should they prove to be any more trouble, to not hesitate to let her know. Molly thanked her, hung up and went about making some brunch; a reasonably unremarkable morning by her standards. To her surprise, it remained that way until Tom noticed that Toby was missing. They had a very loud argument about whether she should have allowed Sherlock to take the cat, followed by whether Sherlock should be letting himself into the flat, followed by an argument over her texting him at the wedding. All of this was simply the slippery slope into a row that had been brewing for weeks, a row about ironing, and gender roles in society, but mostly ironing.

Tom was fed up of being side-lined and treated like the butt of jokes. He wasn't the cleverest man ever to live, but he was valid, and so were his ideas. He was also not fond of Molly's recent violent streak, nor her propensity to treat him like a child, he was entirely capable of washing his own clothes, and ironing them, it just seemed silly for two of them to do it. His mum had always said that it was a woman's job to look after her husband, and despite current gender equality lectures on every social media platform, it was hard for him to accept that he should spend his evenings doing housework. He did cook during the week, especially if Molly's shift pattern was outside of sociable hours, but as she tended to be around in the day, she could iron then, surely? Molly hated that Tom couldn't seem to justify his inability to do ironing. She did it after working shifts twice as long as his work hours, with a far more demanding job - mentally and physically. She was sick of being told to do women's work, and that she was somehow odd or not good enough because of her job. #

The arguments went around in circles for nearly an hour before she'd had enough, and stormed out of the flat to walk to Baker Street, and retrieve her cat. Naturally, with the world conspiring against her the way it was, she found no trace of her cat, or the detective for that matter. Fighting to keep her voice level, she decided to bypass the Holmes children entirely and rang their mother again, who informed her that the pair were most likely at Mycroft's house, and gave her his address. It was around 45 minutes from Baker Street to Mycroft's by public transport, during which time Molly had tried to calm herself down, but the appearance of a disgustingly loved up couple in her tube car had only succeeded in riling her up even more. By the time she'd reached Mycroft's house, she was livid at Sherlock, Tom, the universe and everything in it. She knocked on the door with more force than was necessary, and waited for someone to open it, arms folded across her chest and foot tapping impatiently.

The brothers were arguing over who should tidy up the sweetener and plastic that was all over Mycroft's kitchen when they heard the knock on the door. They shared a look, knowing the only person who would be knocking on the door today would be Molly, and judging by the ferocity with which she was knocking, at least one of them was in trouble. Instead of actually opening the door, however, the brothers bickered about who should be the one to open it, and which one was in more trouble with both Molly and Mummy.

When no one answered the door, Molly started knocking more insistently, with a few choice words being yelled through the wood, and when that yielded no results she crouched down to the letter box and yelled through that. Through the letter box flap she could hear the brothers arguing, and decided that they had left her no choice, she would have to use the key that Mrs Holmes had given her for emergencies. On one of their 'parent-sitting' evenings, Molly and the Holmes parents had been looking through one of their old photo albums, telling her about Sherlock's pirate phase and trips to the beach, when they came across some photos from a different house. It transpired that it had been Mr Holmes' brother's house, the boys' Uncle Rudi, which was now where Mycroft lived. Luckily for her, because her brother-in-law had owned it previously, Mrs Holmes had a key, a copy of which she'd had made for Molly, just in case.

Mycroft and Sherlock were too busy bickering to hear the key in the lock, or the door opening, but they did hear it slam, flinching at both the noise, and the thought that Molly had a key, which could only have come from mummy. The two were silent for a moment, the only noise the sound of Molly's footsteps.

"Sherlock!" She shouted, unwilling to go traipsing around the elder Holmes' house by herself, who knew what sort of weird and wonderful security features he might have.

"He's in here," Mycroft replied, ignoring the glare his brother was giving him.

She found them with relative ease, her ire briefly replaced by confusion when she saw the state of the pair. Sherlock was wearing last night's suit, holding a mallet, and covered in shards of plastic along with something white and granular. In stark contrast, Mycroft was his usual fully suited self, with the exception of his shoes; he was wearing a pair of white fluffy slippers.

"What is the white crystalline substance on the floor, Sherlock?" She asked quietly, that white solid could be anything: salt, sugar, cocaine…

"An abomination to the world of caffeinated beverages," Sherlock answered, causing both Molly and Mycroft to roll their eyes,

"Sweetener," Mycroft translated,

"Has Toby been anywhere near it?" She asked quickly, initially grateful that it was something that belonged in a kitchen, but concerned that her cat may suffer from it.

"I haven't seen your feline since the infernal creature dug its claws into my skull this morning," Sherlock groused, rubbing his head dramatically, showering Mycroft and his surroundings with more sweetener.

"I would suggest you, ahem, we start upstairs while Sherlock tidies up his mess," Mycroft proposed, helping her find Toby was a small price to pay for all the sweet treats she'd sent him over the years, especially the ones she hadn't told Sherlock about.

Alas, when they went to look for Toby, he was not to be found in any of the hidey-holes Molly could locate. There was no cat sat on the mat, wearing a hat or anything else besides, and she was not impressed. They retreated downstairs to enlist Sherlock to help them search the rest of the property, and the garden, should Toby have escaped outside. Molly wasn't holding out much hope that he'd be of any help, and she was right. He hadn't moved a muscle from where they'd left him half an hour ago, still covered in sweetener, the kitchen still a bombsite. It had been a long day already, and it wasn't even lunchtime, the last thing she needed was a blazing row with a grumpy Sherlock, but unfortunately for her, that was what she was going to get – and what a row it was.

It started as their arguments always did, with snark, sarcasm, and statements. Molly would state her problem, Sherlock would respond with either snark or sarcasm, which Molly would respond to with more sarcasm. If one of them (or in this case both) were in a particularly bad mood, there would be a biting comment or two and the relatively quiet argument would devolve into yelling over each other very quickly. Today, there was also wild gesticulations from Sherlock, interspersed with Molly poking him in the chest, their words flying at one hundred miles an hour. Mycroft had seen enough of these events to last him a lifetime, and decided that looking for the cat was a much better use of his time, and significantly less dangerous to his eardrums. They yelled, each trying to out do the other, which was entirely unnecessary given they were less than a foot apart, Sherlock towering over Molly. It seemed as if they were re-airing every disagreement they'd ever had, from the snippets Mycroft would occasionally catch, until Molly asked him where Toby was over and over again, making Sherlock roll his eyes, crouch down and whistle a short sea jig. After a few moments Toby came bounding down the stairs, and leapt up onto Sherlock's shoulders like some sort of parrot cat.

"When I agreed to lend Toby to you, I did not agree to you training him like some circus animal!" She scolded, trying hard not to laugh at the absurdity in front of her, instead opting to remove the feline from Sherlock directly, and bolt from the house while she still had some voice left, she'd yelled quite enough for one day.

"A cat share, brother-mine?" Mycroft asked, looking pointedly at Sherlock, who in return simply raised an eyebrow in the direction of his brother's feet.