Plot summary:
Sherlock invites (his friend/flatmate ) Y/N to one of The Holme's family reunions where they both realise what they actually want out of life.
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Authors note:
Hey, another establishing relationship fic, I know. I did try to write this with them already having been dating for a while, but it just lacked the spice and the tension---
I have not seen season 4 but I was delighted to hear Sherlock is a country lad who grew up in the British countryside like myself, but LESS pleased to hear the Holmes family house burnt down in a fire?? I am not a fan of tragedy so I say screw that. This is what I imagine Sherlock's family home to be like. *Hurls cottage core at you*
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Initially, Y/N had been confused when Sherlock had pulled up outside 221B in the rental car he'd selected to drive them to his childhood home---
---but, after fifteen minutes roaming the British countryside, she now thinks the sturdy, tank-like Land Rover makes perfect sense.
Y/N does not know exactly where they are going.
Sherlock had told her, but it had sounded more like something out of a Beatrix Potter book than a real place. It had a name so English Y/N could taste tea and Custard Creams on her tongue as she'd heard it.
Holliegate Loke?
Setterfield Barn?
Willow Cottage?
Something like that. She doesn't even know if they're nearly there because he hasn't entered it into the SAT-NAV.
Sherlock doesn't make the several-hour trip home often but he seems to know the way instinctually; like a bird returning to its nest site. From Baker Street, he had gravitated instantly to the dual carriageway and ridden it for several hours until it just sort of...ran out.
London reduced to nothing but a grey smear on their memories, Sherlock had then taken them through several quaint little towns which turned into cobble-stoned villages, which then turned into rolling hills and country roads smattered with clods of mud from tractor tires.
Woodlands creep onto the cracking pavement, trees reaching their branches over like wedding arches, and several times they'd had to ford a small flood, climb out of a pothole and---on one occasion---wait for a heard of several hundred sheep to filter over the road into a daisy-flecked field.
Their borrowed Land Rover took all this in its stride, dodging them around pheasants, dog walkers, and wading through long-neglected potholes, the paintwork now freckled with spatterings of healthy countryside mud.
They had passed the time with word games, easy conversation and an audiobook of Diane Setterfiled's new book: Once Upon A River---
---but, upon passing through the first village they've come across for over half an hour, Sherlock had switched it off and started pointing things out from the window.
Y/N watches as a limestone building shaped like a miniature cathedral passes on their right, to which Sherlock mutters with evident disgust:
"I was homeschooled but I did my GCSEs there."
Looking back at it over her shoulder with newfound interest, Y/N can't see through its long, victorian-style windows but she imagines the desks are still made of wood and the board is still designed for chalk. She smiles to herself, imagining a gangly fifteen-year-old Sherlock wandering the halls in school-boy shorts and a stripy tie. "What GCSEs did you take?"
"Extra science, music, history and," he flushes "art."
Y/N stares at him, her eyes widened by this unexpected tidbit of information and, to distract her, Sherlock points at a row of shops that evidently make up the heart of the town.
Only one (displaying the familiar Boots Pharmacy logo) boasts a freshly tiled roof and an automatic door, the rest are squat, stone cubes lined up on a steadily inclining hill. There's a chip shop that fills the car with the greasy smell of batter, a tea room with little circular tables outside threatening to roll down the hill, a grocers stacked with crates of fresh produce, and a convenience store, a peeling red Royal Mail post box embedded in its thick wall.
"That's the corner shop Mother would take us to every Friday if we were well-behaved," Sherlock says, his voice warmer than when he'd identified his high school. "I'd get a chocolate Mini Milk and Mycroft would have a Cornetto."
He carries on like this through the village, pointing out old haunts, the shops thinning out into more practical establishments like a tidy little library, a family-run hardware store, and a rather redundant Police Station. "I had a part-time job there as a teenager but they fired me because they're all incompetent."
Y/N sniggered knowing that translates to:Â 'The staff found me insufferable'.
Then, as quickly as it had begun the village trickles to an end and they're back to country roads.
The going is slower than before, the road narrowing into a single lane wriggling up steep hills and around snaking between rectangular fields. Every now and again they have to pull onto the knobbly grass verge so a car (or occasionally, a baler) can squeeze past their wing mirrors; or, presently, so they can overtake a particularly slow truck towing a horse box (the horse---a moody-looking bay mare---frowned her long face disapprovingly at them as they passed).
Smatterings of trees begin to build up on either side of the road, gradually shrouding the miles of open wheat and luminous rapeseed fields from view.
Some time ago, Y/N had opened Maps on her phone, but---referring to it now---their car is marked as a little triangle travelling precariously along a thin grey line, surrounded by an expansive 2D nothingness.
Y/N is still watching the tiny isolated arrow inching through the void when suddenly, without warning, Sherlock takes a right turn straight into the woods.
Y/N hadn't seen the road at first, having assumed it was not a road at all but a rough trail picked through the woodland by deer. "How did you know that was there?" She gasps, admittedly still slightly startled.
Sherlock, on the other hand, steers them down the road easily, one hand loosely resting on the wheel. It jolts and spins as the car clambers over the uneven ground, and he lets it do as it wishes as naturally as one of those off-road drivers Y/N has seen on the tele. "Didn't you see the track?" He asks, his brows furrowed---but an almost indetectable smirk twitches at the corner of his mouth.
They're on the track but Y/N can still barely see it.
It really is a track and not a road. There is no evidence of gravel, tarmac, or anything else man-made as far as Y/N can see. The alders, oaks and spindly beech trunks merge together into a labyrinthine haze of greens and browns, and she watches as grey squirrels leap out of the car's path, disappearing into the foliage that swallows them whole.
Whilst bracing herself for the impact of several trees and the possibility of tumbling into a ditch, her phone had fallen into the footwell and she fishes it out from under the seat now, their little blue arrow utterly surrounded by the void.
The virtual map useless, Y/N puts it away and follows the track with her eyes. It carries on for a little while; long enough for Y/N to spot jay filling its beak with twigs, and Sherlock to point out a nuthatch scaling the scaly bark of a yew.
Their hired car tipping and swaying with the dips and stones embedded in the churned-up dirt, they round a corner and are suddenly spat out of the woods and into gleaming daylight.
Sitting squatly amongst the long grass, half embedded in the fringes of the woodland, a modest cottage faces the farmland stretched out before it like a green ocean. The branches of the oak trees brush the uneven roof tiles with each breath of wind, their roots creeping around the front porch like fingers, the woods slowly swallowing the rear of the cottage whole.
From here, Y/N can see it is not entirely alone; some way off in the distance several other houses and cottages line the woods, each probably sporting its own dramatic path through the trees.
The Holme's particular cottage is noticeably grander than the rest and, despite its age, is painted a fresh bright pink, the windows shining and the flowerbeds trimmed and well tended to.
"Are we here?" Y/N asks, despite the track being a dead end and there being nowhere else they could realistically go (without mowing down a meadow).
She doesn't catch Sherlock regarding her with a soft smile because, barely waiting for the car to be put into park, she clambers out, eager to explore, and hefts her suitcase from the boot.
After waiting impatiently for him to collect his own things, she follows Sherlock around to the front of the house, careful not to tread on the forget-me-nots that have fought their way up through the gravel.
He walks comfortably, at ease in his childhood home, but Y/N sticks close to his heels feeling strangely like a stray dog; especially when she catches sight of the other cars already parked in a row down the side of the house.
She recognises Mycroft's somehow spotless Bentley, which---flanked by a Rolls Royce and a beetle-green Morgan---looks uncharacteristically modest. They are lined up in what appears to be a disused horse stable, the roof protecting the expensive cars from the onslaught of pollen shaken from the trees overhead every time the wind blows.
Nearing the house, Y/N can smell the sugary, sappy smell of the woods, the front garden fragrant with lavender and roses. She admires the flourishing shrubbery beds as they pass them, the lawn surrounding their borders allowed to grow freely with clover and wildflowers.
The garden is lined with a low privet hedge which doesn't seem to be managing to keep anything in or out because several grey rabbits sprint for their burrows as the driveway crunches below Y/N and Sherlock's feet. Amongst the honeysuckle that creeps around the wooden door, bees buzz noisily, their chubby pollen-flecked bodies lost in the vines that are gradually absorbing a wooden sign engraved with elegant cursive:
Musgrave Cottage
Sherlock walks inside without knocking, smoothly ducking his head below the jamb and Y/N follows behind, careful not to get any bees in her hair.
Despite its size, the cottage is low-ceilinged and snug, and Y/N is immediately flooded by the smell of roast potatoes and Yorkshire puddings cooking in the next room. The windows---built with a single, simple pane of glass---are small and sunk deep into the stone walls but the foyer is bright, sunlight shining down from the top of the wooden staircase leading up to the first floor.
They had walked into the house without a sound, yet, as Y/N turns her head to admire the heavy curtains, the bookshelves full of nicknacks, the marble flooring patterned like an enormous chessboard---
---she is almost instantly bowled over by an elderly woman sprinting down the stairs at speed in a chaotic jangle of beaded necklaces.
"SHUT-THE-DOOR-SHUT-THE-DOOR-SHUT-THE-DOOR!"
Y/N jumps as what appears to be a witch flies towards her, but Sherlock just calmly nudges the door closed with the toe of his oxfords. "Hi, Mill. What's wrong?
"Thanatos is loose again!"
"Who's Thanatos?" Y/N can't help asking, her mind picturing a cat or perhaps---more suitably given this woman's arty, eccentric attire---a ferret.
"My lizard!" The woman frets, her mass of silver curly hair weaving between Y/N and Sherlock's bodies as she searches, pushing them aside and feeling blindly below a shoe rack. Thrusting her head into a large firewood basket by the door:
"I turn my back for one minute---"
"I don't think he could fit in there, Mill," Sherlock points out gently.
Y/N regards the generously spacious wicker receptacle, imagining it filled with a single, giant reptile. "...He couldn't?"
"He's four feet long."
"Feet?!" Y/N repeats in disbelief, and the woman seems to suddenly realise she's there.
As if momentarily forgetting her rampant pet:
"Ah! A new face!" With gusto, she takes both of Y/N's cheeks in her hands and kisses them. "Hello, my sweet, how do you do? My name's Mildred, I'm this one's mum's sister."
"My aunt," Sherlock simplifies, getting pulled down into a stoop so Mildred can plant kisses on his cheeks too. "Mildred, this is Y/N," he says when she finally releases him. "My flatmate and best friend." He stands aside as if presenting her proudly, and, with her little old lady fingers mostly hidden below thick engraved rings, Mildred gives Y/N's hand a shake that ripples right up to her shoulder.
Y/N guesses she must have to be strong---to corral her enormous pet. "It's nice to meet you. I'll look out for Thanatos."
"The pleasure's all mine, and bless you, dear. I'll just go tell Wendy you're here."
Y/N had expected Mildred to have to leave the room to find Mrs Holmes, but she doesn't. Instead, she flings her head towards the smell of Sunday dinner and hollers:
"WENDY! YOUR SON IS HERE! AND HE BROUGHT A WOMAN!"
For a barely perceivable second, Y/N could have sworn the tips of Sherlock's ears had gone pink---
But she doesn't have time to think about it because she is suddenly consumed by a wave of tweed and wool jumpers.