The Scottish Play - Act I of V
Aug. 25th, 2012 01:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
impulsereader*****
Actus Primus.
SH: Afghanistan or Iraq?
JW: Sorry?
SH: Which was it, Afghanistan or Iraq?
JW: Afghanistan. Sorry, how did you...?
Enter a Doctor.
*****
London’s air was December-crisp the day John arrived home to find Sherlock’s bag packed. His violin’s case had been placed next to it just inside and a garment bag was hanging hooked over the top of the door. He raised his eyebrows a bit because there had been no prior notification of an impending trip, and if there was a trip in the offing it would be the first since Sherlock’s return to Britain, England, London, Baker Street, and John.
He proceeded past the bag and found its owner peering into his microscope in the kitchen. “Going somewhere then?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“The country.”
“Care to be more specific?”
“No.”
“Sherlock.”
He tore his gaze from the instrument with a sigh which seemed to indicate doing so was tantamount to stabbing himself in the heart. “It is the first Christmas since I came back from the dead. My presence has been demanded in no uncertain terms for the Duration of the annual familial gathering of seasonal celebration.”
John considered this carefully. “Your family, which presumably consists of individuals in addition to Mycroft, goes to the country each year to celebrate Christmas?”
“Oh, well summarized, John.”
“Christmas isn’t for another twelve days. When are you leaving?”
“In an hour.”
“What are you going to do for twelve days?”
“Fourteen. The traditional stay is of a fortnight's duration. Various activities are undertaken; hunting, nature walks, recitations and chamber music in the evenings, there will be Shakespeare performed, the children will be given tuition in painting and chess among other things, we will all Dress For Dinner each evening. It will all be terribly boring and tedious, but I have been threatened in the severest of terms if I do not present myself and pass the interminably dull time along with everyone else.”
John found this intriguing on a few levels. One, it meant there was presumably someone who could threaten Sherlock with something which actually got results; this he had to learn more about if at all possible. Two, the idea of a houseful of Holmeses performing the activities in question was completely bizarre and bound to be thoroughly entertaining; the thought ‘or thoroughly terrifying’ flickered across his brain but he ignored it. Three, he would happily kill to see either Sherlock or Mycroft tutor a child in anything.
“Right then, sounds like good fun. I’ll be ready to go - in an hour you said?”
Sherlock’s expression turned from bored, thoroughly annoyed and mildly mutinous to astonished, and John was always pleased when he managed to astonish his brilliant friend. “What are you on about?”
“Isn’t it obvious? I’m going with you.”
“Why?” he asked in a tone of complete bewilderment.
“Sherlock, if you think I’m going to spend another Christmas watching Harry get drunk when I've been presented with an alternate plan which sounds as if it could feature in a Doctor Who special, you actually are an idiot.” He shrugged. “Besides, letting you out of my sight tends to go badly for both of us.”
“Hm.”
John decided to take this for agreement and hastily went upstairs to pack his bag.
*****
Enter three Witches.
*****
They were met at Chinoor by a tall, lean man with slate grey hair fastened into a ponytail at his nape. When he spoke, it was with a thick French accent. “Sherlock! Mon dieu, back from the dead.”
“Hello, Uncle Claude.”
The older man clapped Sherlock in a quick embrace.
“And the famous Doctor Watson.” John found himself on the receiving end of a hug as well; right, French.
“Yes; John, my Great-Uncle Claude.”
“I have strict instructions to take you to the cottage and then the Dower House before anyone else gets even a glimpse of you.”
“Tea, first with Grandmère and then Grandmother,” Sherlock translated.
“Your Grandmère is quite anxious to hear all about your adventures.”
Sherlock seemed to perk up a bit at that.
An ancient Morris awaited them in the car park and successfully transferred them and their bags to a cheerful, snug little cottage. A riot of vines sporting leaves shading from green to red and back again clung to the brick, covering most of it. The windows were all thrown open wide despite the mild chill in the air and the sound of a cheerful tune being played on a piano poured out of them to greet the newly arrived guests.
Claude shook his head ruefully as they made their way up the walk. “She does it just to annoy me.” He thrust the door open forcefully and bellowed, “Every window in the place wide open! Why can’t we be snug in the dead of winter? I should take Sherlock away again as punishment!”
The music stopped and a very short, neat-looking little woman appeared in the doorway. “Sherlock!” Her voice was only lightly tinted with the French accent which suffused Claude’s. She threw herself at Sherlock, and she was so small in comparison to his height that he couldn’t help the fact that he picked her up off her feet when he returned the embrace.
“Hello, Grandmère.”
She held onto him for a long while, two or three minutes. Then she sighed, and he carefully set her back on her feet. She looked up at him, placed her hands firmly on her hips, and began to speak at him in very rapid, very emphatic French in a tone which clearly conveyed the sort of extreme displeasure usually reserved for matters such as traffic snarls caused by Jeremy Clarkson; or, if you didn’t happen to live at 221B Baker Street, a head in the fridge. John caught lots of odieux, détestable, cruel, terrible; interpolated the odd méchant, peu gentil, haïssable, and effrayant; watched as, under this assault, Sherlock slowly wilted until he was a sad-looking sort of round-shouldered lump of misery. With one last scathing, ‘épouvantable!’ she turned on her heel and whirled back into the room from which she had appeared.
John took in the completely devastated Sherlock before him and looked after her in awe. “When you turned up back at the flat - I should have rung Mycroft and had him send a car for her.”
“Quite,” said the lump of misery.
Claude, who was clearly holding back laughter, clapped his nephew on the back encouragingly. “Come. We shall have tea. This always makes you English boys feel better. Come along, Sherlock.” He chivvied him along after Grandmère with a wink back at John.
Grandmère was already pouring out when the three men joined her. Claude propped Sherlock up on the sofa then sat in a chair and stretched out his long legs indulgently. John sat on the sofa with his friend and responded, “Milk, no sugar please,” to the raised eyebrow aimed his way.
“I am very pleased to meet you, Doctor Watson. I am Sherlock’s paternal grandmother, Sabine.”
“It’s very nice to meet you, Mrs Holmes.”
“Please, call me Grandmère. We’ve all heard so much about you, you’re a part of the Holmes clan already. We’re so grateful to you for looking after Sherlock so well.”
John felt his neck flush red at this praise. “Well, someone has to do it.”
“And Mycroft has always been so heavy-handed about it; he was always so very protective of little Sherlock, I’m afraid that hasn’t translated well into adulthood.”
“Erm, no; no, it really hasn’t.”
“And so you’ve improved matters immensely, Doctor, and we’re all very pleased to finally meet you.”
A thought occurred to John, and he was startled into asking, “Sorry, how did you know I was coming? I sort of invited myself along at the last minute. Actually, I was expecting to have to kip on a sofa somewhere.”
“Oh, Mycroft sent word ahead. He thought the staff would like to know that another room would be in order. He’s always very thoughtful that way.”
“Ah. Yes, of course, he’s very thoughtful.” John wouldn’t really have phrased it that way himself, but…
“Doctor Watson,” Claude suddenly broke in, “I would like to begin a portrait while you’re here. Would you sit for me?”
Startled, John turned to him and saw that while they’d been talking Claude had sketched him, or at least his head. It was just a quick pencil sketch on a small piece of paper, but it was very good; clean, minimalist lines clearly caught the puzzlement which he had felt just moments before. A vision of himself standing in an old-fashioned Admiral’s uniform, redolent with gold braid, his hand thrust into the coat between buttons, tricorn crowning the lot, flashed into his head. “Oh. Erm; of course.”
“Bon. We will begin tomorrow. I shall walk up to the house after breakfast.” He glanced at the mantel clock. “Sabine, I should take the boys up to the Dower House.”
Grandmère’s face resolved into a pout. “I haven’t heard anything from Sherlock at all yet!”
Claude chuckled as he rose to his feet. “This is entirely your own fault, mon soeur. Come along, boys.”
John put down his cup. “Thank you so much for the tea; it was lovely.”
“Yes, yes. Come any time you’re feeling overwhelmed. We’re quite independent and cosy here, Claude and I.”
John chivvied the still practically comatose Sherlock back out to the Morris and the three men continued on.
“Just one more Gran, then?”
Claude shot him an amused glance. “Just one, but The One.”
“Oh, I see.”
“Sabine’s mother-in-law resides in the Dower House, but she will remove to the main house for the Duration in order to keep a close eye on the Production.”
“Sorry, the production?”
“MacBeth. This year’s Production is MacBeth. “
“Oh right, Sherlock did mention Shakespeare.”
The Dower House proved as impressive as it sounded. While it was not massive in size it was very definitely - Grand.
John was ushered into an equally Grand parlour and very nearly missed the occupant completely, because she was tiny; tinier even than Grandmère, and he found himself wondering how such tiny women had produced a descendant as tall and patently un-containable as Sherlock.
The tiny, ancient woman sat perched in the middle of an elegant settee upholstered with a rich gold brocade. Her face was lined with tissue paper wrinkles and she was nothing but skin and bone; John would have feared to expose her to a strong breeze on the chance she might float away. As they approached her she slid to her feet - they hadn’t even reached the floor when she had been seated, he noted - and leaned just lightly on a delicate walking stick as she took a step or two to meet Sherlock. She spoke in a voice pitched Alto and her ringing tone implied a familiarity with the stage; it seemed impossible that so small a person could produce so resounding a tone. “Oh, Bravo, Sherlock! Such a masterful performance! You had us all fooled, of course!”
His friend dutifully lowered himself enough to receive a kiss on each cheek. “Thank you, Grandmother,” he said, but his voice was still a mere shadow of the gloat this would have been before his Grandmère’s set down.
“My friend, Doctor John Watson.”
“Yes, of course. How lovely to make your acquaintance, Doctor. I am Sherlock’s Great-Grandmother, but you may call me Grandmother; all the children do, as Sabine is so obligingly French and there aren’t any others lying about.”
John found himself feeling a little choked up by the fact that two little old grannies had just declared him a part of their family. He was surprised by this, and hurried the emotion on its way. “That’s very kind of you, Grandmother. I’m very happy to meet you.”
Imperiously, Grandmother decreed, “Sit. The tea is just ready.” Before they could obey, however, they were joined by what John interpreted as unexpected guests. Grandmother did not look pleased.
-----
Sennet sounds. Enter Macbeth as King, Lady Macbeth as Queen, Lennox, Ross, Lords, Ladies, and Attendants.
-----
“Sherlock! Darling!”
Sherlock’s brain suddenly switched itself back on and whirred into survival mode – position awareness – initial estimation – detail assessment and planning – controlled environment shifts to a changing environment.
John felt his friend go stiff at his side as this new, strident voice broke in. The room suddenly acquired an air of tension; the audience pulled in a collectively held breath because the tightrope walker had stumbled. Sherlock’s body pivoted away from his, and his partner was suddenly acting a part. “Mummy. Father. How nice to see you.”
John took up his supporting position at Sherlock’s side, just a half step behind; gun hand ready.
They made for a striking visual, Sherlock’s parents, which made sense, considering. The woman, Sherlock’s mother, was a beauty; fading, true, but a beauty nonetheless. John was strongly reminded of Irene Adler. A luxurious fur stole and a hat which could have passed for modern sculpture marked her as posh, and the pose she was striking on the arm of her husband told him Sherlock had learnt the acting aspect of his trade at her knee.
Her counterpart in this tableau of privilege and breeding was taller than Sherlock; at a guess, taller even than Mycroft. Despite a thick shock of hair gone stark white, which contrasted violently with his wife’s aggressively ink-dark tresses, he still gave off an air of powerful physicality. John didn’t like what he saw in his eyes; something of the combatant, something of the bully there.
Sherlock was immediately aware that his father’s gaze and attention were fixed on John alone; he wasn’t sure yet what that indicated so he left the information to be slotted into place properly later. His own attention was diverted when his mother suddenly swooped in, seemingly to apply her red, red lipstick to his cheek, but failing when she pulled away just short of actually touching any part of him. The rope-walker flinched in sympathy, wobbling as a result.
John was coolly assessing many different factors, just as he had been taught to do as both a doctor and a soldier. The most immediate threat was Sherlock’s father; he had no idea why, but why didn’t tend to matter in combat so he didn’t worry about it, simply allocated 45% of his attention to monitoring Combatant Father. Next, he was deeply concerned about the aggressive darting motion Sherlock’s mother was performing in the vicinity of her son’s face; her movements put into his head the image of a bird plucking an eyeball from its socket. This merited 35% of his remaining resources.
“Viola, Hannibal; how delightfully unexpected it is to see you so soon. I was under the impression you would not be arriving until next week.” Grandmother’s tone acidly belied her expressed delight and the tension in the room ratcheted up again; the walker turned on the rope and began the return journey instead of retiring to the safety of his platform.
This put Grandmother on the field as a firm ally and John shifted just slightly so that she was at his back. He then shot a measuring glance at Sherlock, who appeared serene, but that was because he was hiding behind one of the masks he was so adept at donning. He decided that this was a perfectly acceptable way of coping with the current situation, at least until he gained more facts which would clue him in to what shape the situation actually formed; how many sides and angles it had. He allocated 10% of his attention to monitor for changes in Sherlock and reserved the last 10% to assess any new factors which cropped up.
“Grandmother.” Mrs Holmes administered her patented aggressive pecking motion in the direction of the older woman, and both John and Sherlock shifted just slightly forward as if to instinctively throw themselves between Grandmother and a grenade, or perhaps to catch the walker who was so unwisely working without a net.
Sherlock couldn’t quite keep the ghost of a smile from his lips when John missed not a beat of the dynamic. His instinctive understanding of danger always served him well. Mummy, after all, had been known to scatter shrapnel in her wake; candy-coated if you were lucky, crystalline-jagged if you were not. Even so, the portion of John’s attention which had been trained on Father would remain focused there as long as the two men occupied the same space; position, it was all about position, the art of war.
His father made his bow to his ancestor as well, then turned to his son. “Sherlock,” he greeted, and John very nearly flinched, because he said it in Sherlock’s voice. How was that possible, he wondered; neither the shape of the larynx nor the precise length of a person’s vocal chords was inheritable.
Unaware of the tightrope which had been stretched across the room until it nearly took his head off, Claude entered whistling cheerfully, a sound which died a swift death as he visibly bristled after crossing the threshold. He took in the occupants and forced a version of the smile he’d had for Sherlock and John when they had alighted from the train. “Hannibal, Viola, many happy returns of the season.”
Viola effused, “Thank you, Uncle Claude,” and glided over to get close enough to peck at him as well.
Hannibal gave a curt nod.
Claude’s eyes narrowed slightly and his posture turned just a touch aggressive. “Have you been to see your mother yet, Hannibal? She hadn’t been informed of the change in your arrival date when I last spoke with her – ten minutes ago.” The walker eyed the men warily, wishing they’d stop distracting him.
“I will see Mother in my own time, Claude.”
“We were so very anxious to see dear Sherlock, you see,” Viola gushed. “I’m afraid we rushed right here.”
John gaped. They were anxious to see the man they had yet to actually touch in greeting? They were anxious to see their son who, John just now realized, they had not laid eyes on since his return from the grave months earlier?
Somewhat surprisingly, at least to John, it was Grandmother who swiftly and efficiently improved the situation. “Hannibal, this is simply unacceptable. Your first duty is to your mother. You will go to her directly. You may then return here and visit me.” Clearly reluctant, Combatant Father opened his mouth to argue, but got no further. “Go. Now.” The order brooked no refusal; the words themselves almost seemed to shift him bodily with the sheer force of will they represented. Able to hold fast against them for only a few seconds, he grit out, “As you wish, Grandmother,” before he turned on his heel and her gaze forced him from the room.
John reflected that here, then, was the answer to how Sherlock had been convinced to come down here in the first place; Grandmother’s orders must prove effective through the telephone, or possibly even by text.
With Hannibal’s exit the tightrope walker bowed and retired for the evening to relieved, if not enthusiastic, applause. Claude sank into a chair with a deep sigh. Grandmother wrinkled her nose at the elaborate tea tray. “We’ll need a new pot, now,” she said disapprovingly, and rang the tiny silver bell.
Once her husband was gone, Viola dropped what John assumed was only the outside layer of her façade; effusive mother disappeared and she assumed a strictly business-like attitude as she seated herself, then took a cigarette case from her handbag.
Viola looked pointedly at Claude until he began to rummage in his pockets for a lighter he very likely didn’t have. “I suppose I should have gone with him,” she observed as she waited.
“Nonsense, Sabine despises you. She’ll have enough to deal with keeping Hannibal in line; why should you make it more difficult?”
Jesus, thought John, but Viola threw back her head and emitted a low-throated laugh. She then worked her way around to patting vaguely in the direction of Sherlock’s knee. When she very nearly succeeded in making contact with the fabric of his trousers, John held his breath, unsure if this alarming woman’s touch would actually soothe or merely leave behind a rash. The mystery would remain unsolved. Her hand did not make actual contact. John raised his eyes from her hand to her face and found her own gaze was fixed on him. “Introduce me to your,” she paused, came to a decision and continued, “friend, Sherlock, Love.”
Obediently, Sherlock introduced John. Viola looked distinctly unimpressed.
Claude had finally managed to scrounge up a match from somewhere and he lit it only to see the flame stutter out into nothing almost immediately.
“Pity,” remarked Grandmother blithely as a new pot of tea was brought in by a uniformed maid. John stared at her in disbelief. Had she just – no, there was no possible way this little old granny had just put a flame out with the power of her mind – there was simply no way. Still, he reflected, it was Sherlock’s Great Grandmother; he supposed he’d seen stranger things.
“Viola, put that nasty thing away and ask your son about his train journey.”
Viola looked startled, rather as if she’d forgotten she had a son, much less that he was occupying the same room as she. “Oh yes, how was your trip down, my Darling?” She glanced at Sherlock, then away again, but didn’t pause long enough to allow for a response before chattering on, “Your father and I drove, of course. He’s such a demon on the road.”
As his mother chatted to the room in general about the new Aston and her new hat, John eyed Sherlock. He had retreated completely behind a mask of impassivity.
*****
Hoboyes. Torches. Enter a Sewer, and diuers Seruants with Dishes and Seruice ouer the Stage. Then enter Macbeth
*****
It didn’t take long, just until after that first evening’s dinner, for John to realize that Sherlock’s parents were in fact anxious to see (or at least shout at and threaten) both of their sons; they were simply waiting for a slightly more private moment to do so.
Back at the flat, when John had presented his suit for Sherlock’s inspection and (bordering on grudging) approval, he had been fairly convinced that his friend must be having him on with this whole ‘dressing for dinner’ business. This belief was dispelled when he saw the size of The House. The rambling country manor (he refused to think of it as a castle) was enormous and even from outside he could predict it would contain such things as priceless antiques, gargantuan stone fireplaces inside which one would have enough room to turn a pig on a spit, suits of armour keeping watch over long hallways lined with family portraits and heavy velvet drapes, and very possibly a ballroom. So dressing for dinner suddenly seemed like the least of the things which might be expected of him.
When Sherlock rapped smartly at his bedroom door, he opened it to find the detective dressed in his standard attire; the only nods to a heightened formality at dinner being the absence of: one, obvious chemical burns on his cuffs and, two, a bag of severed limbs as an accessory. John found he was uncomfortably reminded that the pair of them had been dressed almost exactly like this when they had left the flat for Moriarty’s trial - and if that wasn’t the wrong visual with which to start any evening - well, it just definitely was, was all.
His friend was still very subdued as he instructed, “Let me see, if you please; turn around.”
Before he’d seen The House John would have found this second inspection annoying and insulting; now he gladly closed the door behind him and obligingly pirouetted for his friend. “Sherlock, this place is enormous.”
“Yes, so you mentioned.” He brushed at John’s shoulders fastidiously; he was still unhappy with the cut of the jacket, but there had been no time to arrange for a fitting. “You look fine. Let’s go, we don’t want to be late. After dinner my Aunt Sophia will give her traditional, and wretched, recitation of The Raven followed by various musical performances.”
“Right.” They began walking, and John ventured, “Sherlock, I think I’ve already seen more than a hundred people knocking about this place. Are they all your family?”
“Mostly. Quite extended family with lots of honorary uncles and aunties thrown in. The seething mass of children seems to take up more space than I imagine it actually does. I understand you were allotted the last available bedroom. Overflow arrivals were being routed to the Dower House, but Grandmother has only fifteen, so they may be turning people away now.”
John felt his mouth fall open. “You’ve got to be joking!”
“Well, not everyone stays for the Duration, they’ll simply be put off a few days depending up their schedules. There will be a lot of musical bedrooms being played over the course of the fortnight.”
John was still gaping at him, and Sherlock misinterpreted this when he glanced over. “Oh good lord,” he scoffed, “not actual musical bedrooms; you won’t be bounced around or expected to share.”
He didn’t bother to correct his friend, he just allowed himself to silently boggle at the sheer number of Holmeses gathered in one place. He wondered what kept this situation from causing a dangerous cosmic anomaly for Sherlock to study, like a wormhole or other Star Trek some such.
Dinner itself wasn’t terrible. The fact that it was served in the ballroom (which did in fact prove to exist) at a table which could have seated the entire British Monarchy (plus all the third cousins twice-removed whom nobody actually liked) was just something that his mind had to accept in order to get on with things. 20% of his attention was still firmly focused on Sherlock’s parents (15% on Combatant Father and 5% on Unpredictable Mummy) so he got an immediate sit rep on their positions at the table. Sherlock steered him away from them when choosing their seats so the percentages monitoring their movements remained constant rather than spiking.
Before the first course was served, the gentleman seated at the head of the table rose to offer a toast. He was an elderly man with hair and beard gone completely white, and he gave off a distinct air of amiable joviality. “Welcome everyone! I’ll keep it short and just remind you all to have fun and rock on while you’re visiting!”
There was a rather rousing response of, “Rock on,” from perhaps three quarters of the diners as everyone lifted a glass. John blinked and turned an inquiring gaze upon Sherlock. A flash of amusement flickered across the blankness of the mask.
“That is my Uncle Rocky, our host. He is Father’s elder brother and he is dotty as a loon, as you can easily infer from the fact that he allows Grandmother to inflict this yearly gathering upon his household.”
John was prevented from asking any follow-up questions because the dining partner to his other side reached over and touched her hand to his arm. Politely, John turned to her. She was a pretty girl somewhat younger than him, and he looked into serious, intelligent eyes behind a pair of spectacles. Sherlock had introduced her as a distant cousin by the name of Claire when they had seated themselves.
“I read the news today.”
A little uncertainly, John responded, “Did you?”
She nodded. “Oh boy.”
“Erm, right.” He considered this sentiment for a second then admitted, “Yes, actually, I suppose that’s generally my reaction to the news these days. The government are certainly mucking it up, aren’t they?”
“We can work it out,” she offered with a careless shrug.
“Yes, I suppose it will work itself out in the end.” He snorted with laughter and added, “Or, at least, Mycroft will do.”
“Will it bring you down?”
John considered this. “Well, he can be an annoying git, but I suppose someone has to be in charge of things.”
“Sail the ship,” she responded sympathetically and shrugged again.
“Yes, though I do wish he’d stop sending cars.” He frowned and decided to change the subject. “Have you come far, Claire, or do you live nearby?”
“I flew in from Miami Beach.”
“Oh, quite far then. Mrs Hudson, our landlady, lived in Miami years ago.”
“Caught the early plane back to London.”
He winced in sympathy. “Those morning flights can be murder.”
“Didn’t get to bed last night,” she agreed with a sigh.
John was starting to get an odd sort of feeling about this conversation, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on why. There was a break, though, as a server discreetly slipped a bowl of soup in front of each of them. John took the chance to check on Sherlock; still locked behind the mask, exchanging a few banal words with a tweedy-looking older gentleman who was peering at him myopically. The fact that he was employing polite dinner conversation worried him more than the mask at this point. He turned his attention to the soup, which was quite good.
He prodded Sherlock a bit, but was unsuccessful in eliciting anything other than bored-sounding monosyllables. During the next course, just as he was finishing a lovely piece of chicken which tasted of lemon and pepper, Claire’s voice inquired near his ear, “And have you travelled very far?” and he turned back to her. “No, we’re just down from London by train.”
“You don’t know how lucky you are.” Her tone was envious.
“Oh, I do, actually,” he assured her sincerely. “I love London. I wouldn’t be anywhere else.”
“The farther one travels, the less one really knows.”
John’s brow furrowed unconsciously. “Hmmm,” was all he could find to offer in response.
She took a moment to study him, looking him very directly in the eyes. She then leaned toward him slightly and asked him in a perfectly earnest tone, “How does it feel to be one of the beautiful people?”
John stared at her, lovely chicken forgotten, his brain whirring madly then finally clicking. Tentatively, he tried, “Got to be good looking ‘cause he’s so hard to see?”
She smiled brightly, clearly pleased. “You can learn how to play the game,” she praised.
Desperately, he racked his brain. “We’re gonna have a good time!” he exclaimed triumphantly.
Her eyes sparkled with amusement. “We’re all alone and there’s nobody else.”
John momentarily drew a blank again. He resisted the urge to hum aloud and instead tried running through titles, those were easier to remember. Finally, knowing he was stretching a point, he offered, “Let it be?”
Claire smiled, and allowed it. “You and me chasing paper, getting nowhere.”
The next one came more easily now that he was getting used to running choruses through in his head. “You know it ain’t easy. You know how hard it can be.”
“Well, I knew, but I could not say.”
“You stick around and it may show,” he assured her.
She nodded and gestured at the people all around them. “They tumble blindly as they make their way across the universe.”
“Eating chocolate cake in a bag,” he agreed. He’d always liked that image, people blindly eating cake, oblivious to what was going on around them.
“Listen to the music playing in your head,” she insisted. “If you think the harmony is a little dark and out of key, you’re correct.”
“Take a sad song and make it better. We’d all love to see the plan.” Immensely proud of himself for getting two different songs in that one, he wondered vaguely if Mycroft could actually get people to adopt this habit, and if it really would make the world a better place. “This could only happen to me,” he assured Claire.
*****
Drumme and Colours. Enter Malcolme, Seyward, Macduffe, and their Army, with Boughes.
*****
The Raven was indeed poorly done. He had no idea why they let this woman inflict it upon the gathering on an annual basis. Perhaps there was blackmail involved. Still, best to get it out of the way, he supposed. Afterward they got an aria from Don Giovanni and a piano piece he didn’t recognize but which the programme assured him was Bach. Then, to his delight, the next performer began Bolero which was rather a favourite of his. So John was just starting to really enjoy the music and relax a bit when Not Anthea suddenly appeared and whispered something into Sherlock’s ear. How much did Mycroft have to pay her to spend Christmas here, he wondered.
“Mycroft is with your parents.”
Sherlock stiffened, just a touch. He nodded his understanding that his presence was required. He inclined his head toward John’s ear and said softly, “I may not be able to return before the end of the program.” He then gracefully rose from his seat and left the room. He was distracted enough by the process of arranging his thoughts properly that he didn’t realize his friend had followed him until they were striding down the hallway, side by side. Allowing just a touch of his attention loose, Sherlock glanced at him in some surprise. “You were enjoying the music,” he observed.
John shrugged. “Yeah, well I don’t currently have a visual on either of your parents, so I’ll stick with you if that’s all right.”
For just a split second, impassivity gave way to something John didn’t at all like to see in Sherlock’s eyes, but it was such a quick flash of emotion that he couldn’t put a name to it. In its wake it left resignation lined with trepidation.
Sherlock was performing complicated calculations in his head which involved position and complementary opposites; the fact that John felt the need to keep him in sight was simply a painful side note. Once he had things slotted into place, he nodded and turned his attention forward again. “My parents and Mycroft,” he informed his companion shortly.
John nodded, and tried to pay some attention to the labyrinthine hallways down which they were stalking. It would be nice to get some idea of the layout of the house so that he didn’t spend the next fortnight either getting lost or having to be led around by the nose.
When they reached the door to the room which Sherlock’s father traditionally chose for these sorts of confrontations, he turned to John and allowed himself the slight quirk of his eyebrow which inquired, ‘Ready?’. His friend nodded in response so he took a deep breath and affixed the mask. He strode forward – turned the handle – entered the room – all in one grand flourish, the dramatic concluding pirouette left merely heavily implied. John, not missing a beat, was close on his heels and smoothly closed the door behind them. Sherlock was immensely pleased with the flow they had achieved. He couldn’t have staged it any better even if he’d had more time to prepare. They were working as a team, their partnership was seamless, and everyone in the room was now aware of that fact. This was an excellent beginning.
Unsurprisingly, the first thing which John noticed was the grenade. Military training tended to give a man that sort of attention to detail.
Hannibal Holmes lounged, all long limbs partially folded into a wing chair; the very personification of elegant dishabille. He was a pair of shoes propped on a footstool, polished to a sheen which reflected the glow of the fire; an impossibly long length of creased trouser; crisp white cotton, top button undone; and a face frozen into a mask of disdain. This particular personification was casually tossing a grenade from one hand to the other. John couldn’t immediately identify what sort of grenade it was without a closer look, but because the safety pin was intact he had to assume it was live.
A quick reconnaissance glance confirmed the presence of Mycroft and Mrs Holmes with an unexpected Not Anthea rounding out the party. Not Anthea’s gaze was firmly fixed on the grenade, eyes moving left to right, right to left, enacting a disturbing variant on an afternoon at Wimbledon. In fact the only person in the room who seemed wholly unconcerned by the miniature bomb in their midst was his wife, who was smoking a cigarette (not her first) and looking distinctly bored. John decided that it was a miracle at least twice over that Mycroft (who was eyeing his father, though his expression was neutral) and Sherlock (whose little finger had twitched just slightly) had survived to adulthood. He also decided that the grenade merited 100% of his attention.
He considered doing exactly what his instincts demanded: confiscate the damn thing no matter what effort it took to do so. He hesitated, though, because this was essentially a Holmes family matter and he was (honorary grandson status aside) not a member of this family. Perhaps it was perfectly normal for them to gather round weaponry to celebrate a Holiday, how was he to know? It was only this niggling technicality which stayed his hand.
“John, how lovely to see you.” Much to his surprise, Mycroft walked across the room to shake his hand. “I’m so pleased you were able to make it down after all.”
Only Mycroft could have said something so completely ridiculous. Amused despite himself, John reminded him, “I wasn’t actually invited.”
“No.” John inwardly flinched as his ears were assaulted by Sherlock’s apricot velvet cadence turned putrid with loathing. “You most certainly were not.”
Smoothly, Mycroft swivelled his attention to his father. “Have you been introduced to John, Father?”
“Not formally,” the man purred in response. John found that he was actually angry that Sherlock’s voice was issuing from the mouth of this man. It felt obscene.
Mycroft seemingly took no notice of the fact that the introduction was very definitely considered undesirable by both parties concerned. “May I present Doctor John Watson, Sherlock’s flatmate. John, our father, Hannibal Holmes.”
“Mr Holmes,” John inclined his head slightly, gaze still on the grenade, still considering if there was any even marginally polite way of securing it.
“Flatmate. Is that the polite term for arse bandit these days?”
Despite the malevolence given dimension which issued the insult, John actually relaxed for a split second. Honestly? The gay thing? That was going to be the big issue here? He automatically threw Sherlock his half of their now familiar, ‘Well, what are we going to tell this lot?’ look. They had adopted this standard glance and response fairly early on because in some situations it actually was better to pretend to be a couple. For the first time, though, he did not receive a subtly raised or lowered brow from Sherlock, apparently the mask didn’t allow for this sort of response.
Sherlock found himself feeling wrong-footed. The papers had been implying this virtually since they had been printing anything at all about him, but no prior hint of disapproval had ever surfaced; no elegant stationery arriving at Baker Street bearing neatly-lettered disgust had touched on this topic. Feeling uncertain of his footing so early in this confrontation was intensely disturbing. Ruthlessly, he shoved the alarm aside and considered his options. If he denied the accusation, there would simply be another on its heels, possibly one which was true and therefore automatically more difficult to address and dismiss. Better to allow this to be the issue and hope John would be at his back, his complementary opposite, the body to his mind.
Sherlock smiled pleasantly, and with a calculated swing of his hips sashayed across the room. As he did, he declaimed, “How clever of you, Father; you’ve anticipated our happy announcement. I believe we’ve settled on ‘lovers’ as the preferred term, actually. How kind of you to ask.” He turned his gaze briefly on his brother and instructed with a sniff, “Do keep up, Mycroft.”
Mycroft didn’t even bother trying to hide his sigh.
And so, John thought, he was now playing gay for Sherlock’s entire family for the rest of time. Fantastic. He wondered how long it would take for the hints about grandchildren to start cropping up. “I imagine we’ll set a date just as soon as I’ve convinced Sherlock to register for something other than a Bunsen burner and a centrifuge. I keep telling him we desperately need a new electric kettle,” he threw up his hands in genuine frustration, “but he just goes on about blood and-,”
Hannibal pulled the pin out of the grenade.
“Oh, Jesus Christ!” Instinctively, John leapt across the room and shoved Sherlock hard, sending him sprawling behind the sofa and diving after him, covering his body as best he could. A handful of seconds later, when no explosion was forthcoming, he realized Sherlock was poking at him, clearly annoyed. “Don’t even try to pretend that isn’t a live grenade, Sherlock,” he threatened in a hissing whisper.
“It most certainly is live, and Father is perfectly capable of lobbing it over the sofa,” he pointed out hotly, huffing out a breath in annoyance. “Do try to relax, John, he has yet to accidentally set one off.”
John noted the modifier with distinct unease. He stood, and offered his hand to pull Sherlock up after him. He then brushed himself off and marched over to Hannibal, who had replaced the pin and was smiling; the visual put John in mind of a feral cat. He put his hand out and firmly stated, “I’ll take that then. Thanks.” He was officially one of the family now that their newly-manufactured happy announcement was out there, and demanding his future husband not be blown up or gassed or even, quite frankly, merely flash-banged by his own father was the very least of the privileges which he considered that granted him.
They locked gazes, and John came to a realization. This man was amused by the fact that he was threatening his immediate family with an actual explosive device. This, whilst being completely horrifying, did explain a lot about Sherlock’s attitude toward gun safety. Without a word, merely a smirk, the grenade changed hands.
John studied the miniature bomb for a moment. The model was unfamiliar, so he decided not to try and disarm it. He simply checked the pin and then set the damned thing on an end table where he could keep an eye on it. He moved a chair slightly so he was between it and Hannibal then sat down. “Right, then,” he said, “was there something else you would rather discuss?”
Without any preamble, Viola stood up and announced shrilly, “This is all extremely upsetting.”
Both Mycroft and Not Anthea snapped to attention. Mycroft stepped to his left, putting himself between Sherlock and their mother. “Mummy, dear, none of us want you to be upset, I assure you.”
To pull the woman’s attention further from her younger son, John advised soothingly, “It’s actually quite fashionable to have a gay couple in the family these days. We can all skip right to being pleased about this without any real fuss, you know,” he was proud to note that he’d almost managed to sound hopeful.
What followed was – unpleasant – even without the grenade in play.
There was enough mental manipulation flying through the air from all the denizens of the family Holmes that John’s head spun and ached before they’d even got to Viola viciously blaming Hannibal for Sherlock being gay because he’d been away (with his secretary, was heavily implied) the weekend his second son’s voice had begun to break. Not that all the accusations, manipulations and machinations going on were related to Sherlock’s purportedly being gay, though, not by a long shot.
They started out quite simply. Hannibal icily accused Viola of having spoiled the children. Viola tearfully accused Mycroft of being insensitive to her feelings because he’d sent her a birthday present. Mycroft snottily implied that he should have been forced to continue taking piano lessons. Viola threw up into Hannibal’s face the wrecked Aston which had been a present from her father. Hannibal glowered darkly as he reminded Mycroft he had won the last game of chess they had played. Mycroft archly inquired if it had been absolutely necessary for his father to force him to play rugby quite as often as he had. Sherlock heatedly demanded Mycroft be put on trial in The Hague. John was a little surprised by how normal it all sounded. Despite the toxic personalities of the parents involved, this family unit still couldn’t quite manage to elevate its spats above those of any other.
Then, despite John and Mycroft’s best efforts, there was a rehashing of the legal woes and thoroughly undesirable publicity brought down upon the family which had resulted from teenaged Sherlock’s suicide attempt, which took the form of a deliberately-calculated cocaine overdose administered whilst standing in one of the fountains in Trafalgar Square. In order to stay focussed on the issue at hand, John filed this new landmark somewhere in his mind between the bathtub which had been the scene of Harry’s similar attempt and the parapet crowning Bart’s Pathology building – safely where he could put off thinking about it.
Branching out into general abuse, they touched on a wide variety of topics: the things Sherlock had blown up as a child, Hannibal’s drinking, the fact that Mycroft had driven off thirty-two individual governesses even before Sherlock was old enough to lend a hand, Viola’s flirting with the gardener, the number of times the back garden had been laid to waste by one of Sherlock’s experiments, Mycroft’s hatred of rugby (yes, again), the mysterious disappearance of an entire setting’s worth of Silver, Sherlock’s refusal to make small talk at parties, Viola’s refusal to leave her bed for days at a time, Hannibal’s wrecking of two dozen Astons over the course of the last year, Sherlock’s heated insistence that Mycroft be hauled up before a war crimes tribunal (yes, again), Viola’s refusal to let Mycroft pour out at his thirteenth birthday party, the things Mycroft had destroyed as a child, the incident when Hannibal had nearly run over Plutarch (whoever that was; John would almost guess another sibling based on the name) with one of the cars, the fact that Sherlock had driven off thirty-five individual governesses after Mycroft had left for Eton, the incident when Viola’s favourite aunt had woken up to find her hair dyed neon blue, Mycroft’s tendency to instigate wars in countries in which Hannibal had money invested, Sherlock’s refusal to visit, Mycroft’s hatred of cricket, and the many apparently priceless things Mycroft and Sherlock had together obliterated as children, to mention a few.
It went on and on, and every once in awhile one of Sherlock’s parents would fix John with a death glare to remind him that he himself was the most recent resentment which had been added to the list. Interestingly, neither of them actually tried to either pay or run him off; John had been expecting something of that sort. He eventually realized that no one actually cared that Sherlock was now supposedly gay. This was just the most recent excuse they’d seized on to shout vile things at one another. Not that they did shout, of course; not one of them once raised his voice. Each of the four Holmeses had staked out a battle position, fortified it with an ugly glare, and then proceeded to snipe nastily at the other three; obscenities delivered in the plumiest of tones.
John learned quite a lot that evening.
From some of the things which were vocalized he learned that Sherlock’s father was obsessed with appearances and consequently with somehow forcing Sherlock to behave properly, which his son utterly refused to do. John judged he had this man to thank for his finding human body parts scattered round the flat on a regular basis. He learned that when not acting a role, his mother had an emotional repertoire limited to either vacuous selfishness or razor-sharp malice aforethought, and the transition from one state to the other simply could not be predicted with any accuracy. After quite a lot of consideration, he assigned the blame to her for everything else which annoyed him about his flatmate.
From other things which were not vocalized he learned that Sherlock’s father was a cruel man; he learned that it was entirely possible that after they had emerged from her womb, Sherlock’s mother had never again initiated physical contact with either of her sons. He also learned that Mycroft’s creepy stalking of his brother was simply the continuation of a life-long habit of protecting him from these two. Unfortunately for the elder brother, this goal conflicted painfully with his belief that he had, and would continue, to utterly fail at this task because of Sherlock’s own refusal to remain out of the line of fire; whatever fire happened to be nearest, it didn’t matter who was firing at what, Sherlock would merrily fling himself into the fray. John sympathized with Myrcroft’s point quite a bit more than he was willing to admit aloud.
As he watched these people lay waste to one another emotionally, John resolved one thing for certain. He would begin hugging his friend on a daily basis; to hell with what people would say.
*****
Exeunt.
*****
Eventually, the hammering and the slicing stopped. He usually had no real idea what had caused them to stop, but in this case he was inclined to attribute the ceasefire to the seventy-sixth time John had mildly interjected, “How old was Sherlock when he did this, then?” and followed up with a much sharper, “Right, I think we should move on as he’s grown some since then.” His parents had to be finding that as annoying as he was at this point since everyone concerned knew he was still in possession of the necessary skills and, more importantly, willing to use those skills to blow up the back garden.
However it came about, his parents retired for the evening and he found himself in a room gone suddenly quiet and still. It was wonderful. Everyone else still in the room seemed to agree with him. They all simply sat in silence for a long while, the tension slowly ebbing away.
The first person to move was Not Anthea, who walked over to where John was sitting and distastefully gestured toward the grenade. “I’ll disarm that if you like.”
Grateful for the offer, he replied, “Yes, if you don’t mind, that would be utterly fantastic. Thank you.”
She picked it up and by the time she returned to her chair she had the detonator detached. She carefully separated the two elements, pocketing the smaller one and handing the now useless shell to Mycroft. He studied it thoughtfully before putting it down on the end table next to his chair.
He sighed. “Do assure me we won’t have to suffer through an actual farce of a wedding. Family weddings get so dreadfully messy.”
Sherlock started, and looked up at his brother. He was, as usual, sneering, but in this case it was just to add to the joke. A sharp bark of laughter startled Sherlock; it startled him even more when he realized it had come from him. Next to him, John let out a giggle of his own; it sounded rather forced, but it was still a reminder that crime scenes could be funny when it wasn’t your own psyche hemmed in by a chalk outline. He gave in to the giddy hysteria which was the source of his own laughter, and his partner followed suit.
“Do you think,” John managed a few minutes later, “that I should kip at the foot of your bed? It would add to the illusion and free up a room for someone else.”
“Oh yes, do,” Sherlock drawled, “I so look forward to kicking you off a score of times before morning.”
So he and John laughed together as a direct result of a joke told by Mycroft. It was the most bizarre of situations, but at least it was better than crying.
After another little while, the two of them staggered giddily to bed and, somewhat curiously, John insisted on hugging him before they retired to their separate rooms for the night. Sherlock ended up attributing this to John being grateful there was a bedroom to which he could retire. He hadn’t protested that this had been Mycroft’s doing because he had found the physical contact surprisingly bracing. He also did not want John to go back and hug Mycroft; the mental image was disturbing.
Actus Primus.
SH: Afghanistan or Iraq?
JW: Sorry?
SH: Which was it, Afghanistan or Iraq?
JW: Afghanistan. Sorry, how did you...?
Enter a Doctor.
*****
London’s air was December-crisp the day John arrived home to find Sherlock’s bag packed. His violin’s case had been placed next to it just inside and a garment bag was hanging hooked over the top of the door. He raised his eyebrows a bit because there had been no prior notification of an impending trip, and if there was a trip in the offing it would be the first since Sherlock’s return to Britain, England, London, Baker Street, and John.
He proceeded past the bag and found its owner peering into his microscope in the kitchen. “Going somewhere then?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“The country.”
“Care to be more specific?”
“No.”
“Sherlock.”
He tore his gaze from the instrument with a sigh which seemed to indicate doing so was tantamount to stabbing himself in the heart. “It is the first Christmas since I came back from the dead. My presence has been demanded in no uncertain terms for the Duration of the annual familial gathering of seasonal celebration.”
John considered this carefully. “Your family, which presumably consists of individuals in addition to Mycroft, goes to the country each year to celebrate Christmas?”
“Oh, well summarized, John.”
“Christmas isn’t for another twelve days. When are you leaving?”
“In an hour.”
“What are you going to do for twelve days?”
“Fourteen. The traditional stay is of a fortnight's duration. Various activities are undertaken; hunting, nature walks, recitations and chamber music in the evenings, there will be Shakespeare performed, the children will be given tuition in painting and chess among other things, we will all Dress For Dinner each evening. It will all be terribly boring and tedious, but I have been threatened in the severest of terms if I do not present myself and pass the interminably dull time along with everyone else.”
John found this intriguing on a few levels. One, it meant there was presumably someone who could threaten Sherlock with something which actually got results; this he had to learn more about if at all possible. Two, the idea of a houseful of Holmeses performing the activities in question was completely bizarre and bound to be thoroughly entertaining; the thought ‘or thoroughly terrifying’ flickered across his brain but he ignored it. Three, he would happily kill to see either Sherlock or Mycroft tutor a child in anything.
“Right then, sounds like good fun. I’ll be ready to go - in an hour you said?”
Sherlock’s expression turned from bored, thoroughly annoyed and mildly mutinous to astonished, and John was always pleased when he managed to astonish his brilliant friend. “What are you on about?”
“Isn’t it obvious? I’m going with you.”
“Why?” he asked in a tone of complete bewilderment.
“Sherlock, if you think I’m going to spend another Christmas watching Harry get drunk when I've been presented with an alternate plan which sounds as if it could feature in a Doctor Who special, you actually are an idiot.” He shrugged. “Besides, letting you out of my sight tends to go badly for both of us.”
“Hm.”
John decided to take this for agreement and hastily went upstairs to pack his bag.
*****
Enter three Witches.
*****
They were met at Chinoor by a tall, lean man with slate grey hair fastened into a ponytail at his nape. When he spoke, it was with a thick French accent. “Sherlock! Mon dieu, back from the dead.”
“Hello, Uncle Claude.”
The older man clapped Sherlock in a quick embrace.
“And the famous Doctor Watson.” John found himself on the receiving end of a hug as well; right, French.
“Yes; John, my Great-Uncle Claude.”
“I have strict instructions to take you to the cottage and then the Dower House before anyone else gets even a glimpse of you.”
“Tea, first with Grandmère and then Grandmother,” Sherlock translated.
“Your Grandmère is quite anxious to hear all about your adventures.”
Sherlock seemed to perk up a bit at that.
An ancient Morris awaited them in the car park and successfully transferred them and their bags to a cheerful, snug little cottage. A riot of vines sporting leaves shading from green to red and back again clung to the brick, covering most of it. The windows were all thrown open wide despite the mild chill in the air and the sound of a cheerful tune being played on a piano poured out of them to greet the newly arrived guests.
Claude shook his head ruefully as they made their way up the walk. “She does it just to annoy me.” He thrust the door open forcefully and bellowed, “Every window in the place wide open! Why can’t we be snug in the dead of winter? I should take Sherlock away again as punishment!”
The music stopped and a very short, neat-looking little woman appeared in the doorway. “Sherlock!” Her voice was only lightly tinted with the French accent which suffused Claude’s. She threw herself at Sherlock, and she was so small in comparison to his height that he couldn’t help the fact that he picked her up off her feet when he returned the embrace.
“Hello, Grandmère.”
She held onto him for a long while, two or three minutes. Then she sighed, and he carefully set her back on her feet. She looked up at him, placed her hands firmly on her hips, and began to speak at him in very rapid, very emphatic French in a tone which clearly conveyed the sort of extreme displeasure usually reserved for matters such as traffic snarls caused by Jeremy Clarkson; or, if you didn’t happen to live at 221B Baker Street, a head in the fridge. John caught lots of odieux, détestable, cruel, terrible; interpolated the odd méchant, peu gentil, haïssable, and effrayant; watched as, under this assault, Sherlock slowly wilted until he was a sad-looking sort of round-shouldered lump of misery. With one last scathing, ‘épouvantable!’ she turned on her heel and whirled back into the room from which she had appeared.
John took in the completely devastated Sherlock before him and looked after her in awe. “When you turned up back at the flat - I should have rung Mycroft and had him send a car for her.”
“Quite,” said the lump of misery.
Claude, who was clearly holding back laughter, clapped his nephew on the back encouragingly. “Come. We shall have tea. This always makes you English boys feel better. Come along, Sherlock.” He chivvied him along after Grandmère with a wink back at John.
Grandmère was already pouring out when the three men joined her. Claude propped Sherlock up on the sofa then sat in a chair and stretched out his long legs indulgently. John sat on the sofa with his friend and responded, “Milk, no sugar please,” to the raised eyebrow aimed his way.
“I am very pleased to meet you, Doctor Watson. I am Sherlock’s paternal grandmother, Sabine.”
“It’s very nice to meet you, Mrs Holmes.”
“Please, call me Grandmère. We’ve all heard so much about you, you’re a part of the Holmes clan already. We’re so grateful to you for looking after Sherlock so well.”
John felt his neck flush red at this praise. “Well, someone has to do it.”
“And Mycroft has always been so heavy-handed about it; he was always so very protective of little Sherlock, I’m afraid that hasn’t translated well into adulthood.”
“Erm, no; no, it really hasn’t.”
“And so you’ve improved matters immensely, Doctor, and we’re all very pleased to finally meet you.”
A thought occurred to John, and he was startled into asking, “Sorry, how did you know I was coming? I sort of invited myself along at the last minute. Actually, I was expecting to have to kip on a sofa somewhere.”
“Oh, Mycroft sent word ahead. He thought the staff would like to know that another room would be in order. He’s always very thoughtful that way.”
“Ah. Yes, of course, he’s very thoughtful.” John wouldn’t really have phrased it that way himself, but…
“Doctor Watson,” Claude suddenly broke in, “I would like to begin a portrait while you’re here. Would you sit for me?”
Startled, John turned to him and saw that while they’d been talking Claude had sketched him, or at least his head. It was just a quick pencil sketch on a small piece of paper, but it was very good; clean, minimalist lines clearly caught the puzzlement which he had felt just moments before. A vision of himself standing in an old-fashioned Admiral’s uniform, redolent with gold braid, his hand thrust into the coat between buttons, tricorn crowning the lot, flashed into his head. “Oh. Erm; of course.”
“Bon. We will begin tomorrow. I shall walk up to the house after breakfast.” He glanced at the mantel clock. “Sabine, I should take the boys up to the Dower House.”
Grandmère’s face resolved into a pout. “I haven’t heard anything from Sherlock at all yet!”
Claude chuckled as he rose to his feet. “This is entirely your own fault, mon soeur. Come along, boys.”
John put down his cup. “Thank you so much for the tea; it was lovely.”
“Yes, yes. Come any time you’re feeling overwhelmed. We’re quite independent and cosy here, Claude and I.”
John chivvied the still practically comatose Sherlock back out to the Morris and the three men continued on.
“Just one more Gran, then?”
Claude shot him an amused glance. “Just one, but The One.”
“Oh, I see.”
“Sabine’s mother-in-law resides in the Dower House, but she will remove to the main house for the Duration in order to keep a close eye on the Production.”
“Sorry, the production?”
“MacBeth. This year’s Production is MacBeth. “
“Oh right, Sherlock did mention Shakespeare.”
The Dower House proved as impressive as it sounded. While it was not massive in size it was very definitely - Grand.
John was ushered into an equally Grand parlour and very nearly missed the occupant completely, because she was tiny; tinier even than Grandmère, and he found himself wondering how such tiny women had produced a descendant as tall and patently un-containable as Sherlock.
The tiny, ancient woman sat perched in the middle of an elegant settee upholstered with a rich gold brocade. Her face was lined with tissue paper wrinkles and she was nothing but skin and bone; John would have feared to expose her to a strong breeze on the chance she might float away. As they approached her she slid to her feet - they hadn’t even reached the floor when she had been seated, he noted - and leaned just lightly on a delicate walking stick as she took a step or two to meet Sherlock. She spoke in a voice pitched Alto and her ringing tone implied a familiarity with the stage; it seemed impossible that so small a person could produce so resounding a tone. “Oh, Bravo, Sherlock! Such a masterful performance! You had us all fooled, of course!”
His friend dutifully lowered himself enough to receive a kiss on each cheek. “Thank you, Grandmother,” he said, but his voice was still a mere shadow of the gloat this would have been before his Grandmère’s set down.
“My friend, Doctor John Watson.”
“Yes, of course. How lovely to make your acquaintance, Doctor. I am Sherlock’s Great-Grandmother, but you may call me Grandmother; all the children do, as Sabine is so obligingly French and there aren’t any others lying about.”
John found himself feeling a little choked up by the fact that two little old grannies had just declared him a part of their family. He was surprised by this, and hurried the emotion on its way. “That’s very kind of you, Grandmother. I’m very happy to meet you.”
Imperiously, Grandmother decreed, “Sit. The tea is just ready.” Before they could obey, however, they were joined by what John interpreted as unexpected guests. Grandmother did not look pleased.
-----
Sennet sounds. Enter Macbeth as King, Lady Macbeth as Queen, Lennox, Ross, Lords, Ladies, and Attendants.
-----
“Sherlock! Darling!”
Sherlock’s brain suddenly switched itself back on and whirred into survival mode – position awareness – initial estimation – detail assessment and planning – controlled environment shifts to a changing environment.
John felt his friend go stiff at his side as this new, strident voice broke in. The room suddenly acquired an air of tension; the audience pulled in a collectively held breath because the tightrope walker had stumbled. Sherlock’s body pivoted away from his, and his partner was suddenly acting a part. “Mummy. Father. How nice to see you.”
John took up his supporting position at Sherlock’s side, just a half step behind; gun hand ready.
They made for a striking visual, Sherlock’s parents, which made sense, considering. The woman, Sherlock’s mother, was a beauty; fading, true, but a beauty nonetheless. John was strongly reminded of Irene Adler. A luxurious fur stole and a hat which could have passed for modern sculpture marked her as posh, and the pose she was striking on the arm of her husband told him Sherlock had learnt the acting aspect of his trade at her knee.
Her counterpart in this tableau of privilege and breeding was taller than Sherlock; at a guess, taller even than Mycroft. Despite a thick shock of hair gone stark white, which contrasted violently with his wife’s aggressively ink-dark tresses, he still gave off an air of powerful physicality. John didn’t like what he saw in his eyes; something of the combatant, something of the bully there.
Sherlock was immediately aware that his father’s gaze and attention were fixed on John alone; he wasn’t sure yet what that indicated so he left the information to be slotted into place properly later. His own attention was diverted when his mother suddenly swooped in, seemingly to apply her red, red lipstick to his cheek, but failing when she pulled away just short of actually touching any part of him. The rope-walker flinched in sympathy, wobbling as a result.
John was coolly assessing many different factors, just as he had been taught to do as both a doctor and a soldier. The most immediate threat was Sherlock’s father; he had no idea why, but why didn’t tend to matter in combat so he didn’t worry about it, simply allocated 45% of his attention to monitoring Combatant Father. Next, he was deeply concerned about the aggressive darting motion Sherlock’s mother was performing in the vicinity of her son’s face; her movements put into his head the image of a bird plucking an eyeball from its socket. This merited 35% of his remaining resources.
“Viola, Hannibal; how delightfully unexpected it is to see you so soon. I was under the impression you would not be arriving until next week.” Grandmother’s tone acidly belied her expressed delight and the tension in the room ratcheted up again; the walker turned on the rope and began the return journey instead of retiring to the safety of his platform.
This put Grandmother on the field as a firm ally and John shifted just slightly so that she was at his back. He then shot a measuring glance at Sherlock, who appeared serene, but that was because he was hiding behind one of the masks he was so adept at donning. He decided that this was a perfectly acceptable way of coping with the current situation, at least until he gained more facts which would clue him in to what shape the situation actually formed; how many sides and angles it had. He allocated 10% of his attention to monitor for changes in Sherlock and reserved the last 10% to assess any new factors which cropped up.
“Grandmother.” Mrs Holmes administered her patented aggressive pecking motion in the direction of the older woman, and both John and Sherlock shifted just slightly forward as if to instinctively throw themselves between Grandmother and a grenade, or perhaps to catch the walker who was so unwisely working without a net.
Sherlock couldn’t quite keep the ghost of a smile from his lips when John missed not a beat of the dynamic. His instinctive understanding of danger always served him well. Mummy, after all, had been known to scatter shrapnel in her wake; candy-coated if you were lucky, crystalline-jagged if you were not. Even so, the portion of John’s attention which had been trained on Father would remain focused there as long as the two men occupied the same space; position, it was all about position, the art of war.
His father made his bow to his ancestor as well, then turned to his son. “Sherlock,” he greeted, and John very nearly flinched, because he said it in Sherlock’s voice. How was that possible, he wondered; neither the shape of the larynx nor the precise length of a person’s vocal chords was inheritable.
Unaware of the tightrope which had been stretched across the room until it nearly took his head off, Claude entered whistling cheerfully, a sound which died a swift death as he visibly bristled after crossing the threshold. He took in the occupants and forced a version of the smile he’d had for Sherlock and John when they had alighted from the train. “Hannibal, Viola, many happy returns of the season.”
Viola effused, “Thank you, Uncle Claude,” and glided over to get close enough to peck at him as well.
Hannibal gave a curt nod.
Claude’s eyes narrowed slightly and his posture turned just a touch aggressive. “Have you been to see your mother yet, Hannibal? She hadn’t been informed of the change in your arrival date when I last spoke with her – ten minutes ago.” The walker eyed the men warily, wishing they’d stop distracting him.
“I will see Mother in my own time, Claude.”
“We were so very anxious to see dear Sherlock, you see,” Viola gushed. “I’m afraid we rushed right here.”
John gaped. They were anxious to see the man they had yet to actually touch in greeting? They were anxious to see their son who, John just now realized, they had not laid eyes on since his return from the grave months earlier?
Somewhat surprisingly, at least to John, it was Grandmother who swiftly and efficiently improved the situation. “Hannibal, this is simply unacceptable. Your first duty is to your mother. You will go to her directly. You may then return here and visit me.” Clearly reluctant, Combatant Father opened his mouth to argue, but got no further. “Go. Now.” The order brooked no refusal; the words themselves almost seemed to shift him bodily with the sheer force of will they represented. Able to hold fast against them for only a few seconds, he grit out, “As you wish, Grandmother,” before he turned on his heel and her gaze forced him from the room.
John reflected that here, then, was the answer to how Sherlock had been convinced to come down here in the first place; Grandmother’s orders must prove effective through the telephone, or possibly even by text.
With Hannibal’s exit the tightrope walker bowed and retired for the evening to relieved, if not enthusiastic, applause. Claude sank into a chair with a deep sigh. Grandmother wrinkled her nose at the elaborate tea tray. “We’ll need a new pot, now,” she said disapprovingly, and rang the tiny silver bell.
Once her husband was gone, Viola dropped what John assumed was only the outside layer of her façade; effusive mother disappeared and she assumed a strictly business-like attitude as she seated herself, then took a cigarette case from her handbag.
Viola looked pointedly at Claude until he began to rummage in his pockets for a lighter he very likely didn’t have. “I suppose I should have gone with him,” she observed as she waited.
“Nonsense, Sabine despises you. She’ll have enough to deal with keeping Hannibal in line; why should you make it more difficult?”
Jesus, thought John, but Viola threw back her head and emitted a low-throated laugh. She then worked her way around to patting vaguely in the direction of Sherlock’s knee. When she very nearly succeeded in making contact with the fabric of his trousers, John held his breath, unsure if this alarming woman’s touch would actually soothe or merely leave behind a rash. The mystery would remain unsolved. Her hand did not make actual contact. John raised his eyes from her hand to her face and found her own gaze was fixed on him. “Introduce me to your,” she paused, came to a decision and continued, “friend, Sherlock, Love.”
Obediently, Sherlock introduced John. Viola looked distinctly unimpressed.
Claude had finally managed to scrounge up a match from somewhere and he lit it only to see the flame stutter out into nothing almost immediately.
“Pity,” remarked Grandmother blithely as a new pot of tea was brought in by a uniformed maid. John stared at her in disbelief. Had she just – no, there was no possible way this little old granny had just put a flame out with the power of her mind – there was simply no way. Still, he reflected, it was Sherlock’s Great Grandmother; he supposed he’d seen stranger things.
“Viola, put that nasty thing away and ask your son about his train journey.”
Viola looked startled, rather as if she’d forgotten she had a son, much less that he was occupying the same room as she. “Oh yes, how was your trip down, my Darling?” She glanced at Sherlock, then away again, but didn’t pause long enough to allow for a response before chattering on, “Your father and I drove, of course. He’s such a demon on the road.”
As his mother chatted to the room in general about the new Aston and her new hat, John eyed Sherlock. He had retreated completely behind a mask of impassivity.
*****
Hoboyes. Torches. Enter a Sewer, and diuers Seruants with Dishes and Seruice ouer the Stage. Then enter Macbeth
*****
It didn’t take long, just until after that first evening’s dinner, for John to realize that Sherlock’s parents were in fact anxious to see (or at least shout at and threaten) both of their sons; they were simply waiting for a slightly more private moment to do so.
Back at the flat, when John had presented his suit for Sherlock’s inspection and (bordering on grudging) approval, he had been fairly convinced that his friend must be having him on with this whole ‘dressing for dinner’ business. This belief was dispelled when he saw the size of The House. The rambling country manor (he refused to think of it as a castle) was enormous and even from outside he could predict it would contain such things as priceless antiques, gargantuan stone fireplaces inside which one would have enough room to turn a pig on a spit, suits of armour keeping watch over long hallways lined with family portraits and heavy velvet drapes, and very possibly a ballroom. So dressing for dinner suddenly seemed like the least of the things which might be expected of him.
When Sherlock rapped smartly at his bedroom door, he opened it to find the detective dressed in his standard attire; the only nods to a heightened formality at dinner being the absence of: one, obvious chemical burns on his cuffs and, two, a bag of severed limbs as an accessory. John found he was uncomfortably reminded that the pair of them had been dressed almost exactly like this when they had left the flat for Moriarty’s trial - and if that wasn’t the wrong visual with which to start any evening - well, it just definitely was, was all.
His friend was still very subdued as he instructed, “Let me see, if you please; turn around.”
Before he’d seen The House John would have found this second inspection annoying and insulting; now he gladly closed the door behind him and obligingly pirouetted for his friend. “Sherlock, this place is enormous.”
“Yes, so you mentioned.” He brushed at John’s shoulders fastidiously; he was still unhappy with the cut of the jacket, but there had been no time to arrange for a fitting. “You look fine. Let’s go, we don’t want to be late. After dinner my Aunt Sophia will give her traditional, and wretched, recitation of The Raven followed by various musical performances.”
“Right.” They began walking, and John ventured, “Sherlock, I think I’ve already seen more than a hundred people knocking about this place. Are they all your family?”
“Mostly. Quite extended family with lots of honorary uncles and aunties thrown in. The seething mass of children seems to take up more space than I imagine it actually does. I understand you were allotted the last available bedroom. Overflow arrivals were being routed to the Dower House, but Grandmother has only fifteen, so they may be turning people away now.”
John felt his mouth fall open. “You’ve got to be joking!”
“Well, not everyone stays for the Duration, they’ll simply be put off a few days depending up their schedules. There will be a lot of musical bedrooms being played over the course of the fortnight.”
John was still gaping at him, and Sherlock misinterpreted this when he glanced over. “Oh good lord,” he scoffed, “not actual musical bedrooms; you won’t be bounced around or expected to share.”
He didn’t bother to correct his friend, he just allowed himself to silently boggle at the sheer number of Holmeses gathered in one place. He wondered what kept this situation from causing a dangerous cosmic anomaly for Sherlock to study, like a wormhole or other Star Trek some such.
Dinner itself wasn’t terrible. The fact that it was served in the ballroom (which did in fact prove to exist) at a table which could have seated the entire British Monarchy (plus all the third cousins twice-removed whom nobody actually liked) was just something that his mind had to accept in order to get on with things. 20% of his attention was still firmly focused on Sherlock’s parents (15% on Combatant Father and 5% on Unpredictable Mummy) so he got an immediate sit rep on their positions at the table. Sherlock steered him away from them when choosing their seats so the percentages monitoring their movements remained constant rather than spiking.
Before the first course was served, the gentleman seated at the head of the table rose to offer a toast. He was an elderly man with hair and beard gone completely white, and he gave off a distinct air of amiable joviality. “Welcome everyone! I’ll keep it short and just remind you all to have fun and rock on while you’re visiting!”
There was a rather rousing response of, “Rock on,” from perhaps three quarters of the diners as everyone lifted a glass. John blinked and turned an inquiring gaze upon Sherlock. A flash of amusement flickered across the blankness of the mask.
“That is my Uncle Rocky, our host. He is Father’s elder brother and he is dotty as a loon, as you can easily infer from the fact that he allows Grandmother to inflict this yearly gathering upon his household.”
John was prevented from asking any follow-up questions because the dining partner to his other side reached over and touched her hand to his arm. Politely, John turned to her. She was a pretty girl somewhat younger than him, and he looked into serious, intelligent eyes behind a pair of spectacles. Sherlock had introduced her as a distant cousin by the name of Claire when they had seated themselves.
“I read the news today.”
A little uncertainly, John responded, “Did you?”
She nodded. “Oh boy.”
“Erm, right.” He considered this sentiment for a second then admitted, “Yes, actually, I suppose that’s generally my reaction to the news these days. The government are certainly mucking it up, aren’t they?”
“We can work it out,” she offered with a careless shrug.
“Yes, I suppose it will work itself out in the end.” He snorted with laughter and added, “Or, at least, Mycroft will do.”
“Will it bring you down?”
John considered this. “Well, he can be an annoying git, but I suppose someone has to be in charge of things.”
“Sail the ship,” she responded sympathetically and shrugged again.
“Yes, though I do wish he’d stop sending cars.” He frowned and decided to change the subject. “Have you come far, Claire, or do you live nearby?”
“I flew in from Miami Beach.”
“Oh, quite far then. Mrs Hudson, our landlady, lived in Miami years ago.”
“Caught the early plane back to London.”
He winced in sympathy. “Those morning flights can be murder.”
“Didn’t get to bed last night,” she agreed with a sigh.
John was starting to get an odd sort of feeling about this conversation, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on why. There was a break, though, as a server discreetly slipped a bowl of soup in front of each of them. John took the chance to check on Sherlock; still locked behind the mask, exchanging a few banal words with a tweedy-looking older gentleman who was peering at him myopically. The fact that he was employing polite dinner conversation worried him more than the mask at this point. He turned his attention to the soup, which was quite good.
He prodded Sherlock a bit, but was unsuccessful in eliciting anything other than bored-sounding monosyllables. During the next course, just as he was finishing a lovely piece of chicken which tasted of lemon and pepper, Claire’s voice inquired near his ear, “And have you travelled very far?” and he turned back to her. “No, we’re just down from London by train.”
“You don’t know how lucky you are.” Her tone was envious.
“Oh, I do, actually,” he assured her sincerely. “I love London. I wouldn’t be anywhere else.”
“The farther one travels, the less one really knows.”
John’s brow furrowed unconsciously. “Hmmm,” was all he could find to offer in response.
She took a moment to study him, looking him very directly in the eyes. She then leaned toward him slightly and asked him in a perfectly earnest tone, “How does it feel to be one of the beautiful people?”
John stared at her, lovely chicken forgotten, his brain whirring madly then finally clicking. Tentatively, he tried, “Got to be good looking ‘cause he’s so hard to see?”
She smiled brightly, clearly pleased. “You can learn how to play the game,” she praised.
Desperately, he racked his brain. “We’re gonna have a good time!” he exclaimed triumphantly.
Her eyes sparkled with amusement. “We’re all alone and there’s nobody else.”
John momentarily drew a blank again. He resisted the urge to hum aloud and instead tried running through titles, those were easier to remember. Finally, knowing he was stretching a point, he offered, “Let it be?”
Claire smiled, and allowed it. “You and me chasing paper, getting nowhere.”
The next one came more easily now that he was getting used to running choruses through in his head. “You know it ain’t easy. You know how hard it can be.”
“Well, I knew, but I could not say.”
“You stick around and it may show,” he assured her.
She nodded and gestured at the people all around them. “They tumble blindly as they make their way across the universe.”
“Eating chocolate cake in a bag,” he agreed. He’d always liked that image, people blindly eating cake, oblivious to what was going on around them.
“Listen to the music playing in your head,” she insisted. “If you think the harmony is a little dark and out of key, you’re correct.”
“Take a sad song and make it better. We’d all love to see the plan.” Immensely proud of himself for getting two different songs in that one, he wondered vaguely if Mycroft could actually get people to adopt this habit, and if it really would make the world a better place. “This could only happen to me,” he assured Claire.
*****
Drumme and Colours. Enter Malcolme, Seyward, Macduffe, and their Army, with Boughes.
*****
The Raven was indeed poorly done. He had no idea why they let this woman inflict it upon the gathering on an annual basis. Perhaps there was blackmail involved. Still, best to get it out of the way, he supposed. Afterward they got an aria from Don Giovanni and a piano piece he didn’t recognize but which the programme assured him was Bach. Then, to his delight, the next performer began Bolero which was rather a favourite of his. So John was just starting to really enjoy the music and relax a bit when Not Anthea suddenly appeared and whispered something into Sherlock’s ear. How much did Mycroft have to pay her to spend Christmas here, he wondered.
“Mycroft is with your parents.”
Sherlock stiffened, just a touch. He nodded his understanding that his presence was required. He inclined his head toward John’s ear and said softly, “I may not be able to return before the end of the program.” He then gracefully rose from his seat and left the room. He was distracted enough by the process of arranging his thoughts properly that he didn’t realize his friend had followed him until they were striding down the hallway, side by side. Allowing just a touch of his attention loose, Sherlock glanced at him in some surprise. “You were enjoying the music,” he observed.
John shrugged. “Yeah, well I don’t currently have a visual on either of your parents, so I’ll stick with you if that’s all right.”
For just a split second, impassivity gave way to something John didn’t at all like to see in Sherlock’s eyes, but it was such a quick flash of emotion that he couldn’t put a name to it. In its wake it left resignation lined with trepidation.
Sherlock was performing complicated calculations in his head which involved position and complementary opposites; the fact that John felt the need to keep him in sight was simply a painful side note. Once he had things slotted into place, he nodded and turned his attention forward again. “My parents and Mycroft,” he informed his companion shortly.
John nodded, and tried to pay some attention to the labyrinthine hallways down which they were stalking. It would be nice to get some idea of the layout of the house so that he didn’t spend the next fortnight either getting lost or having to be led around by the nose.
When they reached the door to the room which Sherlock’s father traditionally chose for these sorts of confrontations, he turned to John and allowed himself the slight quirk of his eyebrow which inquired, ‘Ready?’. His friend nodded in response so he took a deep breath and affixed the mask. He strode forward – turned the handle – entered the room – all in one grand flourish, the dramatic concluding pirouette left merely heavily implied. John, not missing a beat, was close on his heels and smoothly closed the door behind them. Sherlock was immensely pleased with the flow they had achieved. He couldn’t have staged it any better even if he’d had more time to prepare. They were working as a team, their partnership was seamless, and everyone in the room was now aware of that fact. This was an excellent beginning.
Unsurprisingly, the first thing which John noticed was the grenade. Military training tended to give a man that sort of attention to detail.
Hannibal Holmes lounged, all long limbs partially folded into a wing chair; the very personification of elegant dishabille. He was a pair of shoes propped on a footstool, polished to a sheen which reflected the glow of the fire; an impossibly long length of creased trouser; crisp white cotton, top button undone; and a face frozen into a mask of disdain. This particular personification was casually tossing a grenade from one hand to the other. John couldn’t immediately identify what sort of grenade it was without a closer look, but because the safety pin was intact he had to assume it was live.
A quick reconnaissance glance confirmed the presence of Mycroft and Mrs Holmes with an unexpected Not Anthea rounding out the party. Not Anthea’s gaze was firmly fixed on the grenade, eyes moving left to right, right to left, enacting a disturbing variant on an afternoon at Wimbledon. In fact the only person in the room who seemed wholly unconcerned by the miniature bomb in their midst was his wife, who was smoking a cigarette (not her first) and looking distinctly bored. John decided that it was a miracle at least twice over that Mycroft (who was eyeing his father, though his expression was neutral) and Sherlock (whose little finger had twitched just slightly) had survived to adulthood. He also decided that the grenade merited 100% of his attention.
He considered doing exactly what his instincts demanded: confiscate the damn thing no matter what effort it took to do so. He hesitated, though, because this was essentially a Holmes family matter and he was (honorary grandson status aside) not a member of this family. Perhaps it was perfectly normal for them to gather round weaponry to celebrate a Holiday, how was he to know? It was only this niggling technicality which stayed his hand.
“John, how lovely to see you.” Much to his surprise, Mycroft walked across the room to shake his hand. “I’m so pleased you were able to make it down after all.”
Only Mycroft could have said something so completely ridiculous. Amused despite himself, John reminded him, “I wasn’t actually invited.”
“No.” John inwardly flinched as his ears were assaulted by Sherlock’s apricot velvet cadence turned putrid with loathing. “You most certainly were not.”
Smoothly, Mycroft swivelled his attention to his father. “Have you been introduced to John, Father?”
“Not formally,” the man purred in response. John found that he was actually angry that Sherlock’s voice was issuing from the mouth of this man. It felt obscene.
Mycroft seemingly took no notice of the fact that the introduction was very definitely considered undesirable by both parties concerned. “May I present Doctor John Watson, Sherlock’s flatmate. John, our father, Hannibal Holmes.”
“Mr Holmes,” John inclined his head slightly, gaze still on the grenade, still considering if there was any even marginally polite way of securing it.
“Flatmate. Is that the polite term for arse bandit these days?”
Despite the malevolence given dimension which issued the insult, John actually relaxed for a split second. Honestly? The gay thing? That was going to be the big issue here? He automatically threw Sherlock his half of their now familiar, ‘Well, what are we going to tell this lot?’ look. They had adopted this standard glance and response fairly early on because in some situations it actually was better to pretend to be a couple. For the first time, though, he did not receive a subtly raised or lowered brow from Sherlock, apparently the mask didn’t allow for this sort of response.
Sherlock found himself feeling wrong-footed. The papers had been implying this virtually since they had been printing anything at all about him, but no prior hint of disapproval had ever surfaced; no elegant stationery arriving at Baker Street bearing neatly-lettered disgust had touched on this topic. Feeling uncertain of his footing so early in this confrontation was intensely disturbing. Ruthlessly, he shoved the alarm aside and considered his options. If he denied the accusation, there would simply be another on its heels, possibly one which was true and therefore automatically more difficult to address and dismiss. Better to allow this to be the issue and hope John would be at his back, his complementary opposite, the body to his mind.
Sherlock smiled pleasantly, and with a calculated swing of his hips sashayed across the room. As he did, he declaimed, “How clever of you, Father; you’ve anticipated our happy announcement. I believe we’ve settled on ‘lovers’ as the preferred term, actually. How kind of you to ask.” He turned his gaze briefly on his brother and instructed with a sniff, “Do keep up, Mycroft.”
Mycroft didn’t even bother trying to hide his sigh.
And so, John thought, he was now playing gay for Sherlock’s entire family for the rest of time. Fantastic. He wondered how long it would take for the hints about grandchildren to start cropping up. “I imagine we’ll set a date just as soon as I’ve convinced Sherlock to register for something other than a Bunsen burner and a centrifuge. I keep telling him we desperately need a new electric kettle,” he threw up his hands in genuine frustration, “but he just goes on about blood and-,”
Hannibal pulled the pin out of the grenade.
“Oh, Jesus Christ!” Instinctively, John leapt across the room and shoved Sherlock hard, sending him sprawling behind the sofa and diving after him, covering his body as best he could. A handful of seconds later, when no explosion was forthcoming, he realized Sherlock was poking at him, clearly annoyed. “Don’t even try to pretend that isn’t a live grenade, Sherlock,” he threatened in a hissing whisper.
“It most certainly is live, and Father is perfectly capable of lobbing it over the sofa,” he pointed out hotly, huffing out a breath in annoyance. “Do try to relax, John, he has yet to accidentally set one off.”
John noted the modifier with distinct unease. He stood, and offered his hand to pull Sherlock up after him. He then brushed himself off and marched over to Hannibal, who had replaced the pin and was smiling; the visual put John in mind of a feral cat. He put his hand out and firmly stated, “I’ll take that then. Thanks.” He was officially one of the family now that their newly-manufactured happy announcement was out there, and demanding his future husband not be blown up or gassed or even, quite frankly, merely flash-banged by his own father was the very least of the privileges which he considered that granted him.
They locked gazes, and John came to a realization. This man was amused by the fact that he was threatening his immediate family with an actual explosive device. This, whilst being completely horrifying, did explain a lot about Sherlock’s attitude toward gun safety. Without a word, merely a smirk, the grenade changed hands.
John studied the miniature bomb for a moment. The model was unfamiliar, so he decided not to try and disarm it. He simply checked the pin and then set the damned thing on an end table where he could keep an eye on it. He moved a chair slightly so he was between it and Hannibal then sat down. “Right, then,” he said, “was there something else you would rather discuss?”
Without any preamble, Viola stood up and announced shrilly, “This is all extremely upsetting.”
Both Mycroft and Not Anthea snapped to attention. Mycroft stepped to his left, putting himself between Sherlock and their mother. “Mummy, dear, none of us want you to be upset, I assure you.”
To pull the woman’s attention further from her younger son, John advised soothingly, “It’s actually quite fashionable to have a gay couple in the family these days. We can all skip right to being pleased about this without any real fuss, you know,” he was proud to note that he’d almost managed to sound hopeful.
What followed was – unpleasant – even without the grenade in play.
There was enough mental manipulation flying through the air from all the denizens of the family Holmes that John’s head spun and ached before they’d even got to Viola viciously blaming Hannibal for Sherlock being gay because he’d been away (with his secretary, was heavily implied) the weekend his second son’s voice had begun to break. Not that all the accusations, manipulations and machinations going on were related to Sherlock’s purportedly being gay, though, not by a long shot.
They started out quite simply. Hannibal icily accused Viola of having spoiled the children. Viola tearfully accused Mycroft of being insensitive to her feelings because he’d sent her a birthday present. Mycroft snottily implied that he should have been forced to continue taking piano lessons. Viola threw up into Hannibal’s face the wrecked Aston which had been a present from her father. Hannibal glowered darkly as he reminded Mycroft he had won the last game of chess they had played. Mycroft archly inquired if it had been absolutely necessary for his father to force him to play rugby quite as often as he had. Sherlock heatedly demanded Mycroft be put on trial in The Hague. John was a little surprised by how normal it all sounded. Despite the toxic personalities of the parents involved, this family unit still couldn’t quite manage to elevate its spats above those of any other.
Then, despite John and Mycroft’s best efforts, there was a rehashing of the legal woes and thoroughly undesirable publicity brought down upon the family which had resulted from teenaged Sherlock’s suicide attempt, which took the form of a deliberately-calculated cocaine overdose administered whilst standing in one of the fountains in Trafalgar Square. In order to stay focussed on the issue at hand, John filed this new landmark somewhere in his mind between the bathtub which had been the scene of Harry’s similar attempt and the parapet crowning Bart’s Pathology building – safely where he could put off thinking about it.
Branching out into general abuse, they touched on a wide variety of topics: the things Sherlock had blown up as a child, Hannibal’s drinking, the fact that Mycroft had driven off thirty-two individual governesses even before Sherlock was old enough to lend a hand, Viola’s flirting with the gardener, the number of times the back garden had been laid to waste by one of Sherlock’s experiments, Mycroft’s hatred of rugby (yes, again), the mysterious disappearance of an entire setting’s worth of Silver, Sherlock’s refusal to make small talk at parties, Viola’s refusal to leave her bed for days at a time, Hannibal’s wrecking of two dozen Astons over the course of the last year, Sherlock’s heated insistence that Mycroft be hauled up before a war crimes tribunal (yes, again), Viola’s refusal to let Mycroft pour out at his thirteenth birthday party, the things Mycroft had destroyed as a child, the incident when Hannibal had nearly run over Plutarch (whoever that was; John would almost guess another sibling based on the name) with one of the cars, the fact that Sherlock had driven off thirty-five individual governesses after Mycroft had left for Eton, the incident when Viola’s favourite aunt had woken up to find her hair dyed neon blue, Mycroft’s tendency to instigate wars in countries in which Hannibal had money invested, Sherlock’s refusal to visit, Mycroft’s hatred of cricket, and the many apparently priceless things Mycroft and Sherlock had together obliterated as children, to mention a few.
It went on and on, and every once in awhile one of Sherlock’s parents would fix John with a death glare to remind him that he himself was the most recent resentment which had been added to the list. Interestingly, neither of them actually tried to either pay or run him off; John had been expecting something of that sort. He eventually realized that no one actually cared that Sherlock was now supposedly gay. This was just the most recent excuse they’d seized on to shout vile things at one another. Not that they did shout, of course; not one of them once raised his voice. Each of the four Holmeses had staked out a battle position, fortified it with an ugly glare, and then proceeded to snipe nastily at the other three; obscenities delivered in the plumiest of tones.
John learned quite a lot that evening.
From some of the things which were vocalized he learned that Sherlock’s father was obsessed with appearances and consequently with somehow forcing Sherlock to behave properly, which his son utterly refused to do. John judged he had this man to thank for his finding human body parts scattered round the flat on a regular basis. He learned that when not acting a role, his mother had an emotional repertoire limited to either vacuous selfishness or razor-sharp malice aforethought, and the transition from one state to the other simply could not be predicted with any accuracy. After quite a lot of consideration, he assigned the blame to her for everything else which annoyed him about his flatmate.
From other things which were not vocalized he learned that Sherlock’s father was a cruel man; he learned that it was entirely possible that after they had emerged from her womb, Sherlock’s mother had never again initiated physical contact with either of her sons. He also learned that Mycroft’s creepy stalking of his brother was simply the continuation of a life-long habit of protecting him from these two. Unfortunately for the elder brother, this goal conflicted painfully with his belief that he had, and would continue, to utterly fail at this task because of Sherlock’s own refusal to remain out of the line of fire; whatever fire happened to be nearest, it didn’t matter who was firing at what, Sherlock would merrily fling himself into the fray. John sympathized with Myrcroft’s point quite a bit more than he was willing to admit aloud.
As he watched these people lay waste to one another emotionally, John resolved one thing for certain. He would begin hugging his friend on a daily basis; to hell with what people would say.
*****
Exeunt.
*****
Eventually, the hammering and the slicing stopped. He usually had no real idea what had caused them to stop, but in this case he was inclined to attribute the ceasefire to the seventy-sixth time John had mildly interjected, “How old was Sherlock when he did this, then?” and followed up with a much sharper, “Right, I think we should move on as he’s grown some since then.” His parents had to be finding that as annoying as he was at this point since everyone concerned knew he was still in possession of the necessary skills and, more importantly, willing to use those skills to blow up the back garden.
However it came about, his parents retired for the evening and he found himself in a room gone suddenly quiet and still. It was wonderful. Everyone else still in the room seemed to agree with him. They all simply sat in silence for a long while, the tension slowly ebbing away.
The first person to move was Not Anthea, who walked over to where John was sitting and distastefully gestured toward the grenade. “I’ll disarm that if you like.”
Grateful for the offer, he replied, “Yes, if you don’t mind, that would be utterly fantastic. Thank you.”
She picked it up and by the time she returned to her chair she had the detonator detached. She carefully separated the two elements, pocketing the smaller one and handing the now useless shell to Mycroft. He studied it thoughtfully before putting it down on the end table next to his chair.
He sighed. “Do assure me we won’t have to suffer through an actual farce of a wedding. Family weddings get so dreadfully messy.”
Sherlock started, and looked up at his brother. He was, as usual, sneering, but in this case it was just to add to the joke. A sharp bark of laughter startled Sherlock; it startled him even more when he realized it had come from him. Next to him, John let out a giggle of his own; it sounded rather forced, but it was still a reminder that crime scenes could be funny when it wasn’t your own psyche hemmed in by a chalk outline. He gave in to the giddy hysteria which was the source of his own laughter, and his partner followed suit.
“Do you think,” John managed a few minutes later, “that I should kip at the foot of your bed? It would add to the illusion and free up a room for someone else.”
“Oh yes, do,” Sherlock drawled, “I so look forward to kicking you off a score of times before morning.”
So he and John laughed together as a direct result of a joke told by Mycroft. It was the most bizarre of situations, but at least it was better than crying.
After another little while, the two of them staggered giddily to bed and, somewhat curiously, John insisted on hugging him before they retired to their separate rooms for the night. Sherlock ended up attributing this to John being grateful there was a bedroom to which he could retire. He hadn’t protested that this had been Mycroft’s doing because he had found the physical contact surprisingly bracing. He also did not want John to go back and hug Mycroft; the mental image was disturbing.
