A hare darts across the driveway as the Land Rover rolls through the gates of Musgrave Cottage, the loose gravel skittering under its frantic feet.
As they unload the car, Y/N can see the black and white eye-like markings of its tail watching them as it lollops across the neighbouring field, stained yellow by the sun marinating into a citrusy orange stain on the sky. Instinctually, she ducks her head through the honeysuckle wrapped about the door frame---out of habit; but it merely buzzes tiredly with the last few bumblebees working the late shift, their fuzzy bodies weighed down with sweet, dusty pollen.
Mrs Holmes is preparing dinner as Y/N heaves her grocery bags onto the kitchen, her hands determinedly working a wet lump of mozzarella as large as a brick against a fatigued-looking grater.
Stepping over quickly, Y/N offers brightly:
"Here, let me do that for you, Wendy."
Mrs Holmes relents the cheese gratefully and stretches her aching fingers. "Thank you, dear. I think I'm going to have to start buying dairy on an industrial scale to feed this lot." She gestures to the rest of the family visible through the little kitchen window, gathered out the front of the cottage, chatting merrily and soaking up the evening sun.
"They all disappear for the day then show up again when they get hungry," Wendy sighs, starting on muscling open a tin of tomato sauce with a can opener that looks like it's from the early twentieth century.
Once its contents have been removed, she stacks it with the other empty tins, heaped in a pyramid on the crowded counter like a carnival game.
On the other side of the room, Sherlock has already unpacked his 'Bag For Life' and is trying to shove the fat roast chicken they'd bought into a stout little Smeg freezer. "Mum, are you dead set on presentation or can I dismember this thing?" He slams the door on its behind impatiently, the door refusing to budge with a squeaking of ice and plastic.
"What are you doing, silly boy?" Mrs Holmes hurries over, pushing him aside and he steps back, defeated. Sighing, she hefts the bird onto the table and begins re-shuffling boxes of fish fingers and tubs of Ben and Jerry's. "Look at the mess you've made! Why don't you make yourself useful?"
"I'm already useful."
"Then be even usefuller and help Y/N and I make the lasagna."
Sherlock visibly perks up. "We're having lasagna?"
Managing to slot the chicken next to a family box of potato waffles, Wendy manages to squash the door closed with her shoulder as if zipping up an over-stuffed suitcase. Tentatively, she tests whether it holds and, when it does, straightens up with a sigh. "We should be, but I haven't even minced the meat yet."
"I'll do that, if it will make lasagna happen faster," he offers readily, and his mother snorts.
He looks affronted. "Hey, I know my way around a kitchen."
"Your mum wants you to cook, Sherl, not locate the biscuit tin in the dark," Y/N quips, and he sneers, stealing a wad of cheese from her pile and popping it into his mouth.
All the same, Mrs Holmes clears the countertop next to Y/N and sets him up with a meat grinder, bowl, and chopping board.
He arranges them around him as he does his science equipment, selecting a knife from the draw and holding it between finger and thumb as though it were a scalpel. Methodologically, he begins slicing the meat into even chunks.
Every now and again, Y/N catches him peering over at her workstation enviously, the mozzarella peeling easily off into milky white shavings.
"Can we swap jobs?" He asks, offering Y/N his gory chopping board with a taunting smirk.
Shielding the cheese protectively, she shoves it away, making a little squeaking noise (which clearly delights him).
Chuckling, he notices his mother leaning on tiptoe to peer out the window, her brows knitting with a frown. "Mum? What's wrong?"
Mrs Holmes waves his concerned tone away, hurriedly wiping her hands on a dishcloth. "You two keep doing what you're doing, I have to nip outside before someone loses another eye---your father's showing off his longbow again."
Sherlock's lip twitches. "Is that a euphemism?"
This gets him a fly-by slap with the tea towel. "Shut up, you dirty boy."
As the beaded curtain clacks behind her, Y/N can hear the sound of a crowd hushing with anticipation, something wooden finding its mark into a target with a satisfying thunk, followed by an eruption of hearty applause.
Y/N looks sideways at her friend, surprised he isn't outside playing with projectile weapons. She finds him thoroughly distracted, frowning at the meat grinder as he turns the little handle with contempt.
"Why can't Mum buy pre-made mince in a packet? This is disgusting," he grumbles, and Y/N gives him a teasing bump with her hips.
"You're a detective, you work with dead bodies."
"Yeah, but I don't have to do this to them."
...
As dusk cools the sky, the strongest of The Holmeses had hefted the dining table and all the chairs outside onto the lawn so dinner can be eaten alfresco, Y/N kneading the warm grass between her toes below the table.
In the far distance, sheep dot the fields like cotton wool stitched onto green blankets, the countryside wide and open and spacious---but Y/N feels cosy, elbows pressed up against hers on either side, Sherlock leaning in to whisper quips and jokes under his breath, Mrs Holmes stretching over the table to shred some home-grown rosemary over the melted mozzarella, Digby filling her glass to her left and Grandma Trudi offering her the breadstick basket to her right.
Towards the end of the meal, when the plates are empty and the drinks refilled, Mr Holmes clears his throat importantly and all heads swivel in his direction. "I know a lot of you were planning on leaving tomorrow morning, but how about you stay another night and we'll have a bonfire, just like old times?"
Y/N notices a look of boyish excitement brighten Sherlock's expression---
---but a look of morose disgust instantly crumples his brother's face, creasing it like a grape shrivelling in the sun. "Let's not start that nonsense back up again, not after last time. I don't want to go back to my office smelling of barbecue."
"You wouldn't if you didn't insist on wearing a three-piece suit to a farm," Sherlock retorts, wiping the end of the baguette around his plate to soak up the remaining tomato juice-riddled cheese.
"Well, sorry for having some self-respect. What are you wearing? Jeans?" Mycroft spits the word as if it tastes bad and Sherlock's pink tongue licks his fingers in contempt.
It makes Mycroft shudder below his waistcoat, his brain probably generating images of spirochaetes. "Can you please have some decorum?"
"Decorum? I've seen you suck up Maltesers like an ant eater."
Mrs Holmes gives Sherlock another slap with her tea towel. The Union Jack towel is presently out of action on the washing line, so the one that explodes with a cloud of flour against her son's head is patterned with a faded map of the Cotswolds. "Stop bickering, you two!" She smiles adoringly at her husband. "That's a wonderful idea, Love. I shall prepare a ham."
"And I'll start on the fireworks!" Adaline Leaps from her seat and is immediately pressed firmly back down by the shoulders.
"No explosives this year, I'm afraid. Remember that nice fireman?"
"Remember him? I slept with him!" Mildred cackles. She fishes a notebook from her dungarees and holds it out for her neighbours to peer at. "I wrote a poem about him afterwards."
The Colonel squints at it, his brows creased. "This just says 'Beefy' seven times crossed out then 'big hose.'"
Mrs Holmes starts stacking the empty plates, raising her voice to drown out Mildred's filth:
"Can someone help me fetch pudding?"
A handful of Holmeses stand to assist in the kitchen, and Y/N turns to Sherlock.
"A bonfire like old times?"
"There was a tradition when Mycroft and I were younger to have the whole family round one night every summer for a huge bonfire," Sherlock explains excitedly. He turns to his father, puzzled. "Why did we stop doing that?"
"Your mother thought it was a good idea to stop after that incident with the National Trust."
"What did you do to the National Trust?"
"We didn't do anything to them, they just lack a sense of humour."
"Yeah," pipes up Uncle Jack, "a fire being 'rampant' and a fire being 'out of control' are two very different things."
...
When gnats start tickling everyone's bare legs and the blackbirds announce the incoming stars, the family heads inside, carting plates to the kitchen like a mini parade.
Y/N follows Sherlock and Sherlock follows several other Holmeses as they gravitate towards the sitting room, falling into squashy armchairs and sofas.
While Barbra and Trudi bicker over whose turn it is to fetch the mugs and milk from the kitchen, Sherlock flops onto a loveseat and Y/N perches next to him, the squeeze rather tight between an array of plump throw pillows.
Sherlock frowns at her sideways as she dithers on the lip of the seat. "What are you sitting like that for?" Lifting an arm, he drapes it easily along the backrest, making a little nook for Y/N between his side and a fat cushion embroidered with a pheasant. He looks at her expectantly, then, when she wriggles into the space, he relaxes, his long legs stretching out comfortably.
Still standing, Mr Holmes gives his neatly pressed trousers a hearty slap. "Right then! Anyone up for Scrabble?"
Several heads hum and nod and the group begins splitting in two---
---but his wife skips forwards quickly and draws the doors to the dining room closed, almost trapping Mycroft and her husband's noses between the slabs of oak.
"Wendy! I could have spilt my bourbon!"
Ignoring him:
"Everyone, I was thinking, instead of games tonight, how about some music?"
This suggestion is met with a happy chattering of approval, although a few voices pipe up that they'd left their instruments at home.
"No matter!"
The bookshelves are not just stuffed with books, Y/N realises as Wendy drags a finger along a row of tall, narrow spines and draws out a square sleeve. With a flourish, she slips the record from the yellowed paper and Sherlock rolls his eyes.
"Don't you think it's time you upgraded the record player, Mum?"
The end of a walking stick bonks him swiftly on the head.
"A record player?!" The Colonel sputters, once again raised to his default state: outraged. "This, young man, is a gramophone. Beautiful machine, first-rate, better than your moronic Twitters and Zunes."
"Zunes?"
"How exactly would one play a 'Twitter'?"
Oblivious to all of them, Mrs Holmes lovingly sets the needle into the viny's fingerprint-like groove and flicks a switch.
The ancient machine pauses as if waking up from a pleasant sleep. Then, as if clearing its throat, it makes a soft scratching sound and a deep baritone voice begins to croon through the speakers, crackling like a fire.
Mycroft groans. "Not Englebert again, Mum!"
Wendy grins, delighting in irking her children. Her flowery skirt swishes about her ankles as she sways to the music, extending a hand to Mr Holmes who grins, setting down his drink.
Taking her palm, he lets Wendy tug him close, so close Mycroft fakes retching noises and Sherlock's cheeks flush pink, stuttering an appalled:
"Mum!"
"Silly pop music," The Colonel tuts, frowning at Wendy and Charles' very public display of affection.
Charles is doing a sort of salsa routine with his feet and Wendy shrieks in delight as he sends her twirling into him, their noses bumping with an explosion of jovial laughter.
"That's what you younguns call dancing?" Using his stick to shakily rise from his chair, The Colonel turns to his wife and executes a surprisingly deep bow. "Let's show them how it's done, Miriam."
The wrinkles of great Grandma Miriums cheeks arrange themselves into a girlish smile and, blushing, she accepts his hand.
Several people whistle and clap as, with unexpected strength, he supports her waist. He steps one foot forward and Miriam steps one foot back, guiding her around the room in an elegant waltz like two leaves caught in the same breeze.
The rug spread before the fireplace slowly becomes a makeshift ballroom as other couples take to the floor, some dragging their reluctant spouse up from their comfortable chairs, others inviting each other for a waltz like bashful prom dates.
From her place on the settee, Y/N watches the couples spinning like the little ballerinas in a music box, her mouth curved with a lazy smile.
She watches Harrold flash Miriam a cheeky, boyish grin before dipping her expertly, making her cling to his jacket with a startled giggle.
She watches huge Grandad George be led around a Persian rug by his tiny little wife, his dark, bear-like eyes mellow and lovesick.
She watches, chuckling, as Mr Holmes tries to get Mycroft to join in, teasingly doing the cha-cha after him as he tries to leave the room.
Life feels different in the cottage, alone amongst the hills, wrapped up in the sky a velvet pin-pricked blanket of stars.
There's colours Y/N has forgotten exist amongst the grey paving slabs of London. She'd forgotten that air could smell of flowers and grass, and the sky could feel crisp and clean on her face.
Something is different about the way people interact with her Sherlock too, Y/N has released with a quiet kind of sadness.
She had watched him laugh with Uncle Jack about something or another, and it suddenly struck her that she isn't used to people being nice to her flatmate.
All the Holmeses talk to him with obvious tenderness and affection, and he returns it, completely void of the sharp, toneless sarcasm he so often reverts to when dealing with Londoners.
In the city he is seen as strange, but here he fits in. It is as if all these people---the eccentrics, these romantics, these scientists and artists---have been mixed together into a dough, and molded out of it, had come Sherlock.
In this room---for once---Y/N is not the only person who loves him.
She does love him, she acknowledges with a nonchalant sort of contentment.
She doesn't expect him to do anything about it.
She loves him just as he is.
She looks over at him, to admire the shadows playing over his cheekbones, the fire flicking about in his eyes, and is surprised to find he is already staring at her.
"Do you want to join in?" He asks.