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A Picture Speaks A Thousand Words (Part 3)

"It's a dog."

"A dog? What the Hell kind of dogs have you been looking at? It's a racoon."

"A very sick racoon, by the looks of it. Can racoons develop anorexia?"

Mycroft's shoulders sagged in exasperation at this. Taking a deep, cleansing breath, he pointed---with less restraint than usual---to the top of the drawing where two lumps were protruding from his sketch's back.

Mycroft is one of 221B's most frequent guests, and also Sherlock's older, much more serious brother. He is a tall, serious man who wears dark, serious suits, and an (almost-constant) serious expression. Sometimes---on rare occasions---he smiles, but it doesn't help. His smile looks forced, like someone dressed a spider up like a waiter and threatened to fire him if he didn't start being more hospitable.

It is customary for Mycroft to pop by on a slow afternoon for tea and board games; although God knows why, for several reasons.

The first:

Neither Sherlock or Mycroft seem to like board games. 'They're called 'board' games for a reason,' Sherlock would quip whenever one is suggested. 'This is utterly trivial,' Mycroft would complain as he sets up all the pieces. 'That's very immature of you,' they'd both throw back and forth with almost every roll of the dice. They say these things, their mouths pressed into unmoving, unamused lines, yet the very next week Mycroft will be back again, usually with some kind of box under one arm.

The second: Sherlock and Mycroft are very different people, thus, it seems strange that their lives should even continue to cross at all. Sherlock is, clearly, some kind of adrenaline-obsessed lunatic that should really be working as a parachute-tester, deep-sea-diver, or fighter-plane pilot rather than an urban detective. This is a harsh contrast to the mannerisms Mycroft calls his personality; the man is the king of all pencil-pushers. He seems to live life as though he could die at any given moment; not in a live-your-life-to-the-fullest kind of way, but as if he's sad that he hadn't.

The third (and most prominent) reason why the Holmes brothers board game sessions bemuse all that happen to come across them is:

They don't really get along very well.

It is possible for two unlikely people to form and maintain a friendship, yes, but these two don't seem to have gotten past the 'forming' part let alone have a crack at 'maintaining' any sort of relationship.

They fight over who gets to be 'the top hat', then they fight over who'll be in charge of the little bits of paper money, then they'll fight over the rule book, then they'll fight over who won and who actually won because the other had---allegedly---been cheating. Or, if they'd been playing a game with no pieces, like Kerplunk (or heaven forbid, Operation) they'd fight over who gets to go first, whether the other had nudged the table, and so on and so forth until one of them storms out of the flat. This will usually be Mycroft, but it isn't unheard of for Sherlock to storm out of his own flat. Y/N had watched her flatmate do this a few times; stomp out the front door, slam it behind him, then stop on the pavement outside, confused as to why he'd left, while his brother remains in the building Sherlock pays for, eating the biscuits Sherlock owns, warming himself by the fire Sherlock had made in the hearth.

It's all rather childish and utterly pathetic and very amusing.

Y/N joins them when she can. Since becoming Sherlock's flatmate and best friend however-long-ago-that-was, she'd quickly been absorbed into the Holmes' little group of weekly sessions of whatever juvenile game one of them can find lodged at the back of their respected cupboards.