Night falls slowly and then all at once, the golden glow leaching from the fields until each head of corn is a crisp silver studded with pearls of moisture.
Up ahead, Y/N can see the Musgrave Cottage swaddled among the dark hills and emerging stars, its curtain-drawn windows and porch light setting the whole thing glowing like a lantern. The kitchen window is the brightest, the few Holmeses that chose to remain behind to prepare dinner occasionally flitting past the pane.
When the driveway eventually crunches under the walker's feet they are greeted by the smell of dinner; yorkies and gravy and the sweet pastry of a pie leaking like steam between the windows, seeping over the sill and dribbling all the way down the garden.
In the desperate, shuffling way wellies are shed, everyone removes their outdoor wear and departs to their rooms to wash up, then assembles in the dining room.
An exceptionally long table takes up the length of the room, and, even then, several other tables have been added to each end---the breakfast table from the kitchen, a desk from the living room, and a folding table from the shed---to accommodate the extra dinner guests.
It takes four vast tablecloths to shroud the entire thing, decorative candles glowing merrily along the centre, utterly swamped by so many heaped plates Y/N worries the table legs will give out.
The air hums with lively, animated conversation, the joy and excitement of being assembled all together evident on every Holmes's face.
Quite smitten with it all, Y/N follows Sherlock to the right side of the table, heavy red curtains drawn across the wide bay windows.
Chairs have been brought in from every room to accommodate the hoard of Holmeses, some of the older generations enjoying armchairs dragged in from the living room, the youngers perched on breakfast stools.
Y/N---who had been generously offered a plush desk chair---makes herself comfortable, arms immediately coming from all directions to offer her a drink.
Beside her, Sherlock crosses his long legs on an upholstered footstool, and Y/N smiles down at him smugly.
"Hello, Shorty," she smirks, and he sticks his pink tongue out at her.
From somewhere a woman's voice chastises him as if he's a naughty child:
"Put that away! You'll catch a fly!"
Startled, Y/N looks around the many faces to see whom the authority figure had been, but it's difficult to tell:
Many conversations criss-cross over the table like multi-colored yarn. Some are in English, but Y/N picks up a few sentences in Russian, and several in French.Two cousins to her side seem to be conversing in a stiff, scripted sort of way, and Y/N realises their entire discussion is in quotations from famous poems, the two riffing off each other as though it were a delightful game.
Uncle Wilber is the only one saying nothing, although after watching him amongst his peers Y/N realises he is saying a great deal but with his eyes and hands, moving them rapidly in his own kind of sign language.
His partners in conversation seem to understand him perfectly:
Y/N watches as Digby remembers something and dips a hand into his voluminous breast pocket.
Finding it, he pulls out the rounded, speckled feather of a barn owl.
Y/N had seen him pick it up from the grass on their walk, and, presently, he presents it to Wilber, who becomes obviously excited and thanks him with a silent hand pressed earnestly to his brother's heart.
Absently, Y/N realises, as the rest of the chairs are slowly filled, that there seems to be a particular order to the seating; the youngest members of the family down one end closer to the kitchen, and the elders down the other, flanked importantly by a gaping open fireplace.
Everyone has their own seat at the table---no matter how long it's been since they've moved out, they still slot into their place in Musgrave Cottage ritually and instinctually---as if they'd never left.
To accommodate Y/N, they've all squished up a bit more to fit her in amongst the family, even if it does mean they're all elbow to elbow.
Carrying one last plate of broad beans, Mrs Holmes is the last to enter the room, glasses raising in an uproar of praise and thanks for her hospitality. Her cheeks rosy from the admiration, she somehow manages to find room on the table for the beans and flaps the adoration away with the tea towel---which is now spattered with flour.
"Most of the vegetables are from the garden," she says, bustling through the tight space between a bookshelf and behind the left side of the table's back rests, "but you can thank M&S for the meat; I would have served up one of those plump ducks outside given the choice."
A chuckle rolls around the room, even from Mr Holmes who gives his wife's arm a playful pinch.
He gets an affectionate flap of the tea towel in return, flour dusting his grey hair like snow.
Mrs Holmes doesn't seem to have realised every set of eyes---plus one lone eye belonging to an aunty wearing a flower-patterned patch---is resting on her as she gets herself settled into a chesterfield armchair.
Noting the room has begun buzzing with a strange kind of eager tension, Y/N looks around in anticipation, wondering what it is they're waiting for.
Everything makes itself clear, however, when Mrs Holmes finally slaps her thighs.
"Right then," she declares. "Dig in!"
With a cheer---the house rattling with the clinking cutlery on flatware---the feast commences.
For the first several minutes, the only words muttered between mouthfuls are more praise to the chef. However, eventually, The Colonel starts up a conversation, giving Mrs Holmes' arm a nudge with the base of his sherry glass:
"That buck we saw earlier would have made an excellent trophy, don't you think Wendy?"
Atop several fat pillows from the living room, he seems to be the only person seated out of order, presumably so that---as the eldest living relative or because of arthritis---he can sit at the head of the table before the fireplace. The flames crackling behind him like a dutiful pet, he gestures to the place on the opposite wall.
It's chock-a-block with shelves and paintings, his eyes dreamily glazed as if picturing the mighty animal's head poking out amongst the clutter.
"Would have looked spiffing on the wall there."
"Yes, dear," she replies in a tone that suggests she had stopped listening to his nonsense some thirty years ago. "Would you like some more yorkies?"
"Great big antlers it had," The Colonel gesticulates with some energy. "And we could have eaten the rest of it, of course."
"Of course," Mrs Holmes agrees, dishing the Yorkshire puddings onto his plate whether he wants them or not.
The Colonel seems to realise he has lost his audience and turns instead to confront the person to his right. "What do you say, boy? A waste letting it go, a real waste."
The "boy"---who looks to be in his late seventies---laughs, giving the old man's stooped shoulders a hefty pat.
It ripples through The Colonel's bones, setting him scowling as he teeters on his pillow tower.
"Old chap, you couldn't have hit it even if you'd been armed with a ballistic missile."
This flusters him; Y/N can tell by the way his knobbly nose flushes with an enraged, tomato sort of red. "I bloody well could have! Huge great thing it was!"
"So was that milkman, but you didn't see him, did you?" Mr Holmes cuts in, and the whole table laughs.
Swept up in it, Y/N laughs too, despite her concern for the milkman. She opens her mouth to ask if he had survived this ordeal but an elderly woman is waving her fork self importantly, the carrot on the end threatening to slide onto the table cloth.
"Deary," she says, her voice sounding strangely like our dear late Majesty Queen Elizabeth The Second. "With your eyesight, you'd mistake a vacuum cleaner for a rifle and end up giving the beast nothing but a jolly good hoovering."
Her husband's cheeks positively ruddy, he bristles like a grey old spaniel raising its hackles. "Eyesight, I'll give you eyesight," he mutters under his breath, his claw-like fingers foraging around the lining of his tweed jacket. From the inside pocket he draws a pistol and aims it shakily at the opposite wall. Squinting one eye and lining up the sight:
"Granted, I'm not as spry as I was when I was eighty, but I can hit a damned deer when it looks me in the face."
On 'face' he proceeds to fire three shots, one piercing a hole in a painting of a young woman with a pink bouffant, one burrowing itself in the rafters, and the last narrowly missing his wife and sinking deep into the wall.
Y/N had gripped her spoon so tightly she's sure she's bent it, but Mirium just rolls her eyes behind her horned-rimmed spectacles and resumes sawing through a hunk of beef.
The last shot had blown a hole in the wallpaper; although it's difficult to tell which one it had been. There are many of them, Y/N realises upon closer inspection, the bullets holes easily mistakable for part of the pattern.
"What did I tell you about that gun, Harrold?" Wendy tuts like a schoolmarm. "They changed the law, you know; you aren't allowed to carry them with you anymore."
The wiry hairs of The Colonel's bushy eyebrows draw together like puzzled caterpillars meeting on a wrinkly leaf. "You don't say? When?"
"1997," Mycroft states blandly, and the table takes a moment to consult their individual mind palaces before nodding in agreement.
Harrold seems puzzled and tucks the gun back into his jacket politely as though it were a dirty handkerchief.
Y/N has a feeling it is going to stay there whether the law approves or not.
"Well, I never, what a world," he mumbles, collecting several hunks of meat with his fork. The majority of his plate is heaped with meat, one lone sprout swimming in a sea of gravy flowing around the base like a moat. "A man can't carry his own weapon, you can't smoke a pipe on a plane, and they've started making milk out of almonds---
The whole table groans.
"Not this again," Miriam pinches the bridge of her nose, her little fingers fitting the shape of it so perfectly Y/N can only conclude she has pinched it so much she's worn permanent grooves.
The woman to Mirium's left puts a comforting arm around her stooped shoulders. Addressing The Colonel whilst keeping a protective arm around his long suffering wife:
"How about you do us all a favour and shut your face? Have some greens, a man your age needs his greens."
Like a converter belt, she passes the bowl of peas down to the man next to him with her free hand, who tries to load them onto the old man's plate.
Outraged, he swats the peas away with the back of one hand, his golden wedge of a signet ring catching the plate with a loud ding.
A scattering of peas skitters across the table.
"A man doesn't need peas---or greens---or milk made of nuts!" The Colonel cries. "A man needs---" a look of serenity suddenly overtaking his whole face, he thinks about it for some time, his forehead creasing with concentration. Then he declares resolutely:
"...A man needs chicken."
"A man needs cyanide," Sherlock mutters in Y/N's ear and she tries to flatten the smile from her mouth.
With her sharp blue eyes, Wendy catches it and addresses them with a fond smile from the other side of the table. "What are you two giggling about over there?"
Mycroft rolls his eyes and it makes Sherlock's cheekbones blush.
"We weren't giggling---"
"So when did you two say you're getting married?" One of the many grandmothers pipes up, squinting at them through bright pink owl-like glasses. "February, was it?"
Minding her own business, Y/N had been enjoying her meal in silence, observing her hosts as though they were a strange, unscripted play.
Now, however, the actors are breaking the fourth wall, peering into the audience and staring at her, their many piercing, sea-foam green eyes fixed heavily on her face which is rapidly suffusing with a blotchy blush.
"They're not getting married, Trudy, love," Mr Holmes corrects tactfully.
"And if we were it wouldn't be in February," Sherlock sneers.
Y/N blinks, her embarrassment turning into interest.
He'd been so quiet, and she'd been so distracted by his relatives, she'd almost forgotten he was there. She turns to him now, though, her eyebrows coming together.
"...Well okay, when would you like to get married?"
He's eaten all the carrots off his plate, and is now half way through all the peas, eating his meal in colour order as Y/N knows he likes to do. He's avoiding her eyes, pretending to be preoccupied with chasing a particular pea around his plate but---with the extra height of her unusual chair---Y/N catches a pink flush creeping down the neck of his shirt. He shrugs cooly, but his shoulders are stiff and his ears still red. "Summer. Obviously."
"Obviously?"
"Naturally. It's warm enough to have the ceremony outside, and the colour schemes would suit your hair."
Y/N opens her mouth to ask something---she's not sure what, but a Nana Trudy is already saying:
"We were married in January, weren't we, George?" She turns to her husband, the one Y/N had initially mistaken for Brian Blessed. "It was a winter wedding of course, so instead of a cold little dress, I wore a tuxedo! With that and my page boy hair, we looked like two young men, we did!" She giggles leaning into her husband's side like a giddy teenager.
Giving his little wife a passionate kiss on the top of her head, he chuckles in a deep gruff voice much like that of a bear below his expansive beard. "Reminds me of my Eton days!"
"Men got married at Eton?" A cousin asks curiously, and George shakes his great salt-and-pepper-maned head.
"Not married, no, but there were no women around, of course, so us lads had to make do. Eaton was like that back then."
"Still is now," Mycroft mutters, getting a roar of laughter.
Taken aback, Y/N blinks. She can't remember any other time in history she's heard Mycroft crack a joke---
---but no one else appears to share her disbelief.
Her perception of reality turning upside down, she realises, in this strange world, Mycroft is seen as The Funny One.
"I would have married a man named Xavier if I hadn't met your mother," Grandad George addresses his many children. "Actually, that summer, there was a short time it could have gone either way." He gives his wife a nudge with the elbow-patched of his jacket, the table exploding with peels of raucous giggles.
A bottle is being handed around once more and it reaches Wendy who offers it to The Colonel.
"White wine, dear?"
"Sherry, Wendy, we are British after all."
A crystal decanter is passed about in that well-practised way typical of large families and by the time The Colonel brings his glass to his lips, it is full.
"I kissed a man once," he states lazily, and the whole table stops their muttering in an instant.
All at once the room falls into a hush, that curiosity Holmeses wear so well stealing across every single face as they settle to listen attentively.
Apparently, this is a story they have not heard before.
"Of course," The Colonel continues, basking in the attention, "that was when kissing a man was a dangerous thing to do; especially in the Army. But, when you're bored in the trenches what else is there to do? Scrapbooking?" he scoffs as if, somehow, scrapbooking is more gay than a snog with another man.
"Did you love him?" A woman pipes up; if Y/N can recall by her wiry strong arms like knotted rope within the sleeves of her cardigan, she's the one who swam the channel.
The Colonel shrugs, swirling his sherry absently, watching it whirl about the glass as if mixing memories with nostalgia. "Perhaps, but there are many different sorts of love. I suppose we didn't feel that sort because we never did it again. We're still friends to this day, though---old Ronnie. I shot a bear with him in Russia just last year, made a coat out of its behind and a roast out of its front."
Once the laughter dies down, the woman beside Y/N asks, seriously:
"How did you know you didn't love him?"
With an expression more lucid and thoughtful than Y/N has seen him so far, The Colonel thinks about it, no doubt chewing his answer around in his head like he's chewing on his forkful of meat. "...I didn't know I didn't love him, but I knew I loved someone else." He gives his wife a soft, lovesick smile, a type of smile that takes fifty years off his face.
Suddenly Y/N sees him as he would have been as a young man; a charming, bright-eyed army Private; a boy smitten for a girl.
"When you love someone you don't need to sit there wondering if you do or don't," he says, reaching for the gravy boat. "You just know you do."