AUTHOR'S NOTE:
I couldn't think of a name for this one ð  I'll dedicate the next chapter to anyone who can think of a better name lol.
I put a little photo at the top there---it's sort of how I imagine Musgrave cottage to look (it is not my photo)---except my version has more trees and is painted pink.
Anyway, you may remember my earlier story 'A Holmes Family Reunion'. I had quite a lot of material and plot ideas I didn't get to use in that one, so I'm using them here. I hope you enjoy, I had a lot of fun writing this <3
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CONTEXT:Â ESTABLISHING RELATIONSHIP. Sherlock and Y/N are visiting his parent's house (and childhood home), Musgrave Cottage---but are unhappy to find it's raining. To make matters worse (for Sherlock, who wants Y/N all to himself) Mycroft has shown up.
Irritated, they settle for playing board games inside, cross-legged on the living room carpet. Everyone is pretty bored, irritated, and arguing like children---until they find Mrs Holmes' old makeup bag.
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"Oh yes, Sherlock, darling," Mrs Holmes' face pops around the door. It's white with baking flour and, because of her round, rosy cheeks, she looks a little like a friendly moon. "Myc rang, he'll be over in ten minutes."
Every so often, Sherlock will declare that 'London is Full Of Idiots', and that he 'Needs To Get Some Fresh Air'âwhich means renting a Land Rover, stuffing some pyjamas in an overnight bag, and visiting his parents.
Sherlock's parents live in the Cotswolds; a very pleasant, very old patch of England that is sort of in the middle and to the left. It's full of simple, old-timey things like sheep, cafes, and butcher shops that still sell things in paper bags.
Their cottage is just over two hours drive from Baker Street, which Sherlock says is 'The Perfect Distance'. They live too far away to visit every day, but close enough thatâwhen his parents do visitâthey don't need to stay for a whole week.
He drew a chart.
This time, Sherlock is visiting his parents because he saw some teenagers making a TikTok video in the grocery store.
"Right!" he said to Y/N, taking her hand and dragging her towards the door, "I need some air."
The next day, Y/N finds herself in the passenger seat of a four-by-four, sorting through a bag of Jelly Babies because Sherlock 'will only eat The Green Ones'.
Since their arrival at his childhood home, they have been playing a peaceful game of Pictionary, but Sherlock raises his head now to frown, disgusted, at his mother.
"What? Why?"
"You always play board games on a Tuesday." Mrs Holmes has a loving yet stern voice, not unlike that of Imelda Staunton. Her biggest weapon, however, is the tea towel she constantly carries slung over her shoulder. Usually patterned with friendly woodland creatures and various baking residues, she'll crack it like a whip if someone steps out of line, and has been keeping the family on the straight and narrow in this way for over thirty years.
"But this isn't a regular Tuesday. I'm on holiday."
"Yes, but you know how he likes his routine."
Sherlock rolls his eyes. "I could be scuba diving in the Red Sea and he'd still track me down and drag me onto the beach because 'it's time to play Scrabble'."
Y/N ducks as, sure enough, a tea towel comes out of nowhere and strikes him on the head.
"Mum! What's wrong with you? Didn't you hear they made it illegal to beat your children?"
"First of all, you're not a child, you're thirty-three. Second, you deserve it. You need to let your brother beâyou know he's autistic."
Mrs Holmes has recently learnt that word, and she will present it proudly at every given opportunity. Also in her arsenal is 'biracial' and 'transgender', which she got from a BBC drama and, since she watched something on ITV 3, she's been repeatedly asking Mycroft if he's 'seeing someone about his OCD'.
"So am I!" Sherlock points out, indignantly, "But I don't go around making it other people's problem."
Y/N snorts as she takes a card from the top of the deck.
It says 'Labyrinth' and she's trying to decide whether to draw a maze or David Bowie when Sherlock turns to her, curtly:
"I'm sorry, I didn't quite catch that."
"Nothing. It's just...you absolutely do make it other people's problem. You're king of making things other people's problems."
"I dispute that claim. Evidence?"
Putting her card down carefully so he can't peek at it---because she knows he will---she counts on her fingers:
"You won't wear clothes made of polyesterâ"
"It's itchy."
"You won't let me wear perfume that smells of watermelonâ"
"Watermelon is awful! Anyway, the perfume I got you suits you better."
"âwe can go to Costa down the road but you hate all the rest; even though they're exactly the sameâ"
"They're not our Costaâ"
"âwe don't cook anything with spinach in it because you hate the textureâ"
"That's just one thingâ"
"âand cucumber, cabbage, pumpkin, those mushroomsâ"
"No one likes pumpkin."
"You won't let us take a bus or the tubeâ"
"They're too crowded!"
"âYou only let us go grocery shopping at Sainsbury's. You only eat Warburton's white bread, and you can tell if I get the wrong one. We eat dinner up the table and dessert on the sofa, but never the other way aroundâ"
"Hey, you started that!"
"âthere was also The Yogurt Incident."
"The what?" Mrs Holmes pipes up, and Sherlock glowers.
"You know how, every day, Sherlock eats a Müller Corner yoghurt for lunch?"
"The one with the banana pieces?" Wendy clarifies, and Y/N's lip twitches. "I always keep several in the fridge when I know he's coming over. When he was a boy, it was Petit Filious; I used to pack them in his lunch box because he refused to have hot dinners."
"Well, sorry for not liking orange fish fingers and congealed baked beans."
"Shush, Sherlock, Y/N is telling a story. Carry on, dear."
"Thank you. Anyway, we ran out at home, so we thought we could buy some on the way here. Guess how many shops we went in before we found one?"
"Between London and the Cotswolds? Goodness me, two?"
"Five. They kept having the strawberry one and the one with the little biscuit balls, but he only wanted the banana one."
"Because I always have the banana one," he says in a way that implies Y/N is an idiot.
"And Mycroft always plays board games on a Tuesday," she retorts right back. "Tuesday is board game day. Lunchtime is banana yoghurt time. You can't have a go at Mycroft when you're just as bad."
Sherlock looks to Y/N and then to his mother and must realise he's outnumbered. Moodily, he ruffles his hair and a cloud of flour floats down onto the carpet. "It's just...I like it when it's just us. I was having a nice time."
He had been having a nice time.
He's always oddly cheerful when he gets to visit his parent's house, and even more cheerful when he started bringing Y/N with him.
He was less cheerful this morning when they pulled off the A40. Usually, the blunted hills and patchwork of wheat fields are toasted to a sunny gold at this time of year. Today, however, as the countryside emerged over the horizon, they found it to be smothered by an overweight, black cloud.
Rain began spitting at their rented car as they penetrated the storm's great underbelly, and it only worsened as they rumbled down the woodland track towards his parent's house.
By the time they dragged their suitcases from the car and held them above their heads, the sun had been completely blotted from the sky, and the gravel driveway was under a centimetre of water.
Having been passed down through the generations, Musgrave Cottage has a distinct Holmes-ness about it. Not really a cottage, more of a manor house with a low roof and long, bay windows, each generation has added their own eccentricities to the plain facade.
Sherlock's grandparents painted it pink when they first moved in, and added a series of potting sheds to house his grandad's fishing equipment.
His great-grandparents planted the orchard, but they underestimated the fertility of the Cotswolds soil because they planted many more trees than anyone expected to grow. Now, each summer, the back garden is slippery with rotting fruit, smells sickly with fermenting sugar, and is infested with wasps.
To house their many children, the Holmeses before that jammed an extension onto the side wall, making it oddly long, and plonked a porch on the front---which sticks out like a nose.
The present Holmeses covered that nose in a wisteria which has grown abundantly, absorbing much of the front of the property like a wild, green beard constantly humming with bees.
Mrs Holmes nailed on some window boxes overflowing with geraniums, and Mr Holmes dug a pond in the front garden so their young sons could dip nets into the oak-leaf-filled water.
Sherlock was the only one who partook. In overalls and wellies, he'd drag newts from the weeds and wave them at Mycroft who, although seven years older, would shriek and flee for the kitchen, whatever encyclopaedia he'd been reading abandoned on the grass.
Although Sherlock visits his parents for a bit of peace and quiet, Musgrave Cottage is a home that never rests:
Made from cold old stone and sat, exposed and alone atop a small hill, it is not only vulnerable to the seasons, but constantly tormented by them.
The fires need stoking in winter, and the north-facing walls are susceptible to stubborn patches of damp. Some of the old wooden windows are prone to leakingâ-just because they feel like itâand the gutters are usually too bloated with leaves to do their job.
Come summer, blackberry brambles threaten to storm the garden wall, and stinging nettles and dandelions pop up all over the lawn, turning Mr Holmes' neatly trimmed grass into a wild meadow. The roomsâthat were bitterly cold in Januaryâturn to stone ovens in August, and the uninterrupted sunlight bleaches the furniture. Every window must be flung open each morning---to air the place out---then shuttered up quickly at night because, like clockwork, a hoard of gnats explodes from the surrounding farmland in search of blood.
All year round, Mrs Holmes cooks, scrubs, dusts, vacuums, wipes, paints, varnishesâand tries to beat the garden into submission.
Mr Holmes is always fixing things, then when he runs out of things to fix, building more things so he can fix them too.
Therefore, when the rain had begun this morning, they had both stood at the window and frowned at the sky, puzzled about how they should proceed. Eventually, Mr Holmes mumbled something about finally sorting out the attic, and Mrs Holmes announced that she'd make a pie. Mr Holmes had said they:
"Already have pie left over from the last time it rained."
and she'd said:
"You can never have too much pie."
Sherlock also seemed restless and eager to get outside.
"That's why I come to the countryside, Y/N," he'd explained irritably when they'd driven towards the swirling, inky darkness as if it had personally offended him. "What's the point in being here if I can't go outside?"
"To see your parents?" she'd suggested, which had made him grumble something inaudible as he indicated left at the roundabout.
They'd managed to make the most of the situation, thanks to Y/N's suggestion that they play Pictionary. Sat cross-legged on the living room rug like children, they'd managed to waste an hour or two passing a tatty pad of A4 back and forth, and taking it in turns to scribble with a pack of Crayolas that look like they dated back to 1956.
Glad of something to do, Mrs Holmes had brought them a plate of biscuits, and the box of supplies from The Art Cuboard. Dating back to Sherlock's childhood, it still sports several dried-up tubes of paint, matted brushes, and a slightly crushed diorama of the battle of Hastings.
Taking a break from drawing to bisect a Jammie Dodger with his teeth, Sherlock asks, sounding more like a moody child than ever:
"I just don't get why Mycroft always comes over when I'm here; I told him it was my turn to visit. Sometimes I come here just to get away from him."
"I asked him to visit! It's been ever so long since I've seen him."
"You saw him last week when he fixed your computer!"
"He did fix my computer because he's a good boy, who looks after his mum! Not like you, you don't visit enough."
"I live in London; that's two hours away," Sherlock protests, nettled, but Mrs Holmes just shakes her head.
She's given up on the day providing any daylight and begun drawing the curtains. It takes a while because they're the kind that has to be tied up at each side of the window with braided tassels. "So does Myc! And it's worse for him because he's right on the other side. Even Y/N visits me more than you."
Sherlock turns to his best friend, wearing a look that's somehow both baffled and betrayed.
"You do? When?"
Y/N shrugs. "Sometimes, when you leave for cases, I worry, so I come here and we worry together. We have a lovely time, don't we Wendy?"
"Yes, dear, we love having youâI always said I wanted a daughter." She gives Sherlock a look, but he doesn't catch it.
His eyebrows are still all drawn into the middle of his face.
"You visit my mum?"
"Yeah. She's teaching me to knit. How long is Myc staying, Wendy?"
"Just for dinner. He gets lonely in that big house---"
"Mycroft? Lonely?" Sherlock snorts.
Y/N un-crosses and re-crosses her legs. The left one has had pins and needles for thirty minutes, and she thinks it's about time the right one had a go. "Well, yeah, he's human, isn't he?"
"Only technically."
"And anyway, you didn't see him last week because he had that meeting. What was that about anyway? It must be pretty important if someone like Mycroft gets summoned to Buckingham Palace."
"He wasn't summoned, he was invited. He was a good friend of Liz."
"Liz?"
"The late queen, Y/N, surely you've heard of her? Her face is on our money."
"Well obviously, but I don't think you should call her Lizâas if she's just some old lady Myc would visit for tea and biscuits."
"Why? She was. Anyway, since she died, he's been checking in on the family. Sometimes he bakes a bundt cake." He must notice Y/N's expression because he sighs:
"I know, trust Mycroft to befriend The Royal Family. You're very proud, aren't you Mum?"
"I'm more surprised he checks in on people," Y/N mutters under her breath.
Sherlock is the only one who hears.
It makes the corner of his lip quirk up.
...
"What is that?" Y/N asks, leaning around so she can get a look at Sherlock's drawing from his point of view.
If anything, that makes it worse.
"A church?"
"Come on, you know what that is! I talk about it all the time!"
"A dog?"
"How does that look like a dog?"
"Cheese?"
"What?"
"You're always going on about cheese. You like to eat blocks of cheddar like a chocolate bar."
A tea towel comes out of nowhere.
"Sherlock! That's ever so bad for you!"
"For Christ's sake, Mum!"Â Scowling, he scrabbles angrily at his hair again.
Another flurry of flour joins the already white-dusted carpet.
"And no, it isn't, it's just a cheese board with less steps."
"Here, let me get it," Y/N sighs, shuffling up to him on her knees.
He tips his head forward pliantly and, piece by piece, she picks little lumps of pie pastry and butter from his chocolate-coloured curls. Dusting her hands:
"Was it cheese?"
"What?"
"Pictionary."
"Oh. No, it was 'revenge'."
Y/N rolls her eyes. "How did I not get that?"
"Exactly!"
The sound of bony knuckles striking the front door echoes off the stone walls in three distinct, equal taps. They're barely audible over the steady flicking of rain against the window panes, but Mrs Holmes makes a surprised little old lady sound all the same.
"Oh, that'll be your brother!"
Sherlock audibly groans. "He's here already? Can't we do something?"
"What are you going to do?" Y/N asks. "Fake a stroke?"
"How did you know?!"
Her smile turns to a wince as she uncrosses her legs and rises from the rug with a stretch.
Reluctantly, Sherlock follows her, although he barely unfolds his long, lanky body. It remains hunched over sullenly, as though the rain is falling inside the house and dribbling into his shirt.
She gives him a little nudge in the ribs with her elbow. "Why don't you like Myc, all of a sudden?"
He curls his fingers into sardonic air quotes. "It's not really 'all of a sudden'. I've never liked him."
Knowing there's no point arguing with him when he's in one of his petulant moods, Y/N just sighs and rephrases:
"Okay, why do you like him less than usual? Did you have a falling out?"
"I'm a grown man, I don't have fallings out."
She gives him a look and he rolls his eyes.
"Fine, if you must know: he upset me."
"How?"
"He said I could never hold down a normal job."
"Well, you couldn't."
A high-ceilinged corridor runs down the centre of Musgrave Cottage. It's lit by a low, dusty chandelier and a semi-circle of stained glass above the door. The light that filters through this window is green, but not because of the glass; the outside is covered in wisteria leaves (and, on a sunny day, bees).
The hallways ends abruptly with a wooden staircase that curls around to create a balcony before it reaches the first floor, the shiny bannister varnished by generations of children's bums sliding down at alarming speeds.
Several old paintings of extinct relatives watch guests come and go from the walls, their faces peeling with old, sun-stained varnish. They have been somewhat robbed of their solemnity; someone has scribbled a moustache and spectacles on a little old lady, and a feather boa rests about the bust of a stony-faced bearded man sitting on a plinth.
The floor is still tiled with the original (somewhat cracked) black and white marble slabs and---standing on a white square with ramrod posture and a full three-piece suit---Mycroft looks oddly like a disgruntled chess piece.
He's frowningâas usualâbut, this time, he's also steadily dripping. Disgustedly, he wriggles his way out of a sopping jacket like a snake shedding its skin, and Y/N gives him a little wave.
"Hi, Myc. You made good time."
It had taken her a while, but she's finally discovered that the only way to compliment the older Holmes brother is to comment on his punctuality. His appearance, knowledge, or skillsâhe's not interestedâbut tell him he 'made it right on the dot' and he'll preen proudly, then offer one of three stock compliments in return.
Today, Y/N recieves a polite:
"Y/N! You are looking well. How did the filling go?"
She has given up asking him how he knows things, so she just shrugs. "Great, actually; I have a really good dentist."
"You're welcome."
She blinks, but he's already turned to Sherlock as he drags one wet arm from his jacket. "And brother, mine, always a pleasure."
His 'brother, mine' seems to be ignoring himâwhether by accident or not, Y/N isn't sure. He's still saying insistently:
"I could work anywhere, I just choose not to. If I had to, I could sit at a desk and do numbers, or something."
"Do numbers?" Y/N takes Mycroft's umbrella for him and begins the tricky business of folding it up.
"All right, so I don't know the technical termsâ"
"I think if you're calling it 'doing numbers' you're probably not suitable for the role. Why does it matter anyway? Would you ever want a normal job?"
He waves the idea away as though it's an irritating fly. "God, no, I can't abide by compliance."
"That, and you barely scraped a pass in GCSE maths," Mycroft drawls, and Y/N prods him with his own brolly.
"Hey, be careful with that, there's a sword in the end!"
"Children, come on, don't fight!" Mrs Holmes begs. "You only just got here."
"I thought you said we weren't children," Sherlock mutters. "I thought you said I was thirty-three."
Usually, Mycroft's face looks like it could use a cap full of fabric conditioner---
But it softens now. Perhaps because the shard of ice he calls a heart has thawed a little, seeing his sweet mum clasping her hands over her Cath Kidson apron, a smear of butter on her left cheek, her blue eyes hopeful and pleading.
Or maybe he just wants to show up his insolent younger brother.
Either way, he says regretfully:
"Apologies, Mother. Let's start again, shall we?" Having shed his skin and removed his (somehow still) shiny oxfords, he offers Y/N a smile and a stiff kiss on the cheek. "Hello, Y/N. A pleasure as always." Straightening:
"And Brother dearest, it's been a while."
"And I've enjoyed every minute of our time apart."
There's a second where time seems to stutter, like a broken DVD. Sherlock does a sort of double take, his thick brows bunching over his pointed nose.
"Did you just kissâ?"
Mycroft's lip is doing a twitching thing that could, under the right lighting, be called a smile. "Is that such a surprise?"
"Yes, frankly. Since when are you comfortable kissing a woman?"
Yes, definitelyâMycroft is giving a smug smile. Sort of like a cat playing with a mouse before eating it. "Since I realised it makes the tips of your ears turn red. If you're so jealous, why don't you just kiss her?"
Y/N turns to Sherlock, expecting to find him flapping the suggestion away with another disinterested handâ
But he has gone red. It's started at his cheekbones and is dribbling down into his shirt collar. He's frowning, and the lines between his brows deepen when he realises Y/N is narrowing her eyes at him.
"I'm not jealous!"
"Why don't you kiss her anyway?" Mrs Holmes suggests helpfully.
"Mum!"
"I'm sorry, love, I just thought it would be a nice idea," Wendy apologises, her warm little hand patting Y/N on the arm. "I'd just love to have some grandchildren before I kick the bucket!"
To say Sherlock looks mortified is an understatement. His mouth is hanging open, struggling silently to form words.
"Mum, you do know we aren't together, don't you?" Flushed uncomfortably, his hand finds his neck and scratches it. Emploringly, he stammers to Y/N:
"Please ignore her. If she had her way, we'd be married next week."
Y/N forces a brittle, unsure little laugh. "And we both know that would be... awful."
His eyes meet hers and she's puzzled to find he looks upset. He moistens his lips. "A-awful? ...Why would marrying me be awful?"
She'd never seen him look like that before.
His eyes have dulled until they're more grey than blue, like a light has been snuffed out.
"It wouldn't be!" she insists quickly. "I meant me, marrying me would be awful."
He shakes his head as if confused. "No, it wouldn't."
Mycroft inflates his lungs then deflates them with an over-exaggerated sigh. "If you all don't mind, I'm going to change the subject before I retch. Mother, dearest..." From tucked neatly under his arm, he hands Wendy a box of Quality Streets.
"Ooh, what's this?"
Flatly, "They are chocolates presented within a popular irregular shape."
"I know, you silly boy, I meant why?"
"A man gave them to me."
"A man?" she and Y/N ask hopefully, but Mycroft doesn't seem to catch their tone.
Sherlock doesn't catch it either. "A man? What man?"
"I think it was a man. Either way, I accidentally saved a pedestrian from being hit by a cab."
"Accidentally?"
"I hailed the taxi just before it hit him. I just wanted to go to Chiswick then, suddenly I have this woman and all these sticky children strangling me."
"What?"
"They didn't even do a good job of it; they completely ignored my neck and squeezed my body. It was awful."
"So they hugged you?"
"If that's what you want to call it," Mycroft's lips have pursed as though the memory leaves a rancid taste in his mouth. "I had to get my suit ironed."
"What were you doing in Chiswick?" Sherlock asks.
"If you must know, I was attending a pottery class."
"Pottery? You hate getting your hands dirty."
"I do indeed, but remember when I was ten years old I said I want to know everything about everything, everywhere, that ever existed?"
"Vaugly."
"Well, pottery is part of everything."
AUTHOR'S NOTE:
Enjoying this? You might like my published novel :-) Links in comments <3