Fic: I Say it Runs in the Family (sequel to Doctor, Detective and Sons)
Title: I Say it Runs in the Family
Fandom: Sherlock (BBC)
Rating: G
Warnings: Brief mentions of an ED and drug abuse
Notes: Almost a year ago now, I wrote a fill for a Sherlock prompt that asked for kid!fic. This is the sequel, and you can find the original here - this sequel will make a lot more sense if you read it first. It’s basically if Sherlock and John had real life problems instead of (or as well as) criminal adventures. After the wonderful Maruo contacted me and translated the fic into Chinsese ( here - requires a login) I ended up writing a sequel for the lovely community over there, which I’ve now cleaned up and am finally posting in English. They also produced the most beautiful fanart ( here by Calita and here by 标准间住户 if you scroll down). This is really a great big thank you to my translator and everyone else in the 221D forums.
Summary: One Christmas in the Holmes-Watson house sees Geoff bring home a lady. John does his best, Sherlock mostly does as he’s told, but Murray fails utterly to be welcoming.
When Mary first met Geoff, she thought he was mad. She didn't know, yet, that he had been struggling with madness - both internally and externally - for most of his life.
They met at a wedding; not their own, obviously (that was still two years away). Mary had a step-cousin who was disliked by her mother and aunts. Her mother and aunts had therefore bullied her into representing them because the cousin, against all familial good sense, was quite fond of Mary. Geoff was an old school-friend of the groom's who had been invited because the groom wanted to save money on musician hire by having him serenade the bride up the aisle. At the reception they were seated together at a table of mismatched extras with no dates.
"This is Geoff Watson," said Mary's cousin. "He's the lead singer of Anticlap."
"What the hell's that?" Mary asked.
"Actually it's the Anticlap," Geoff corrected. "As in Gonorrhea."
Mary's cousin's smile faltered for a moment, but then returned brighter than ever. "The Anticlap are amazing, Mary. Haven't you heard them on the web? They're all over the networks. Two number one singles this year, right Geoff?"
"To date," Geoff said blandly, staring at the groom on the far side of the tent.
"Geoff was going to play at the ceremony, but he lost his voice just this morning," Mary's cousin explained uncertainly.
"Can't sing a note," Geoff agreed, and coughed unconvincingly.
They were the only two people at the table under the age of fifty, but Geoff's answers to Mary's questions about his band were stilted. Finally, sick of one-word replies and shrugs, she asked, "Why'd you really refuse to sing?"
Geoff looked at her, pressed his lips together for a moment and then replied, "I was at the rehearsal this morning and observed certain details about the groom's mobile, the wedding rings and the best man. The groom is sleeping with another woman and has just found out she's pregnant. The song they asked me to sing had an inappropriate fidelity theme."
"My God," Mary breathed. "Why didn't you tell her? My cousin? That's what they have the 'speak now' bit for, for chrissake-"
"Why? She enjoyed today. And now that they're married the courts will give her a percentage of his not inconsiderable assets when he files for divorce. She'll need it, since judging by the amount of stolen stationary in their front room and the new bottle of folate tablets in the pantry, she's left her job to become a mother. She's not pregnant yet though, given the amount of wine she's already consumed, so it'll all be neat and tidy."
Mary stared at him. Then she drank her own glass of Pinot Gris in four gulps and went to tell her cousin the bad news.
It was not a solid basis for a relationship, but Mary asked Geoff to dinner that Friday in order to interrogate him on exactly how he'd worked out about the groom's other woman (it had all turned out to be true, down to the last detail). Within two weeks she was in love with him and in a month they were exclusive. Mary was thirty-one that year, Geoff twenty-six. The first time they slept together, he narrated the entire time. Afterwards he admitted that she was his first. She would never have believed this, except that Geoff was entirely adverse to hyperbole.
"No, you're joking," she said. "Look at you. You're a six-foot-two, genius musician and you're gorgeous, women throw themselves at you. I've seen them do it."
"I swear it's true."
"How?"
Geoff shrugged, smoothing out the sheet between them. "I mostly find most people to be mostly dull."
She decided to take that as a compliment.
The wedding of the lost voice had taken place in March. By November, Geoff and Mary were living together in a flat in Cambridge, close enough for Mary to walk to the campus where she worked. Their routines were as familiar as if they'd been together for many years. They were both morning people and both avid wine drinkers. They both wanted a large dog but the landlord forbade it. They both abhorred social events, preferring to sit at home and read even if it meant they didn't speak for entire evenings. Neither of them liked photographs of themselves, so there were none of either in the house. There were photographs of Mary's sisters, who lived in Toronta and Dubai, and of her grandmother, whom she was very fond of. Geoff said he had no living grandparents, but there was a picture he'd put up in the front hall of a scowling, black-haired teenager hugging a beaming younger boy to his chest.
"My little brothers," he explained. Other than that she got only glimpses of his family: he regularly spoke on the phone to someone he called "Dad" (or more rarely, "Daddy") and he would let slip obtuse statements like "Dad liked the new album," or "I wish Daddy would stop stalking our fanblogs." She figured out that his middle brother had been at Oxford but left, or possibly failed, under grim circumstances, while his youngest brother was still in high school. She knew nothing more than that.
But Geoff rarely talked about anything in detail unless it was his art so Mary didn't think much of his reticence. She liked to hear him talk about music, which she didn't understand in the slightest. She had played the clarinet for three years in primary school but suspected she was tone deaf and could never hear the worlds of meaning in songs the way Geoff did. Geoff talked about music the way Stephen Hawking used to talk about non-Newtonian physics, with equal parts wondrous passion and intense curiosity.
That November, however, she had one important question about his family. She had had three requests from her own parents to come home to Manchester for the break and she desperately needed a way to avoid a forth. She liked her sisters and her grandmother but not the generation in the middle, her mother and three cackling, married aunts whose own offspring had grown up and escaped years ago. So finally she waited until she was driving Geoff home from the studio where the Anticlap practiced, then came straight out and asked, "What are your plans for Christmas, Geoff?"
"I usually go home to my parents' house."
"They're in London, right?"
"Yeah. Dad said Murray will definitely be there, and I haven't talked to him in ages. And I like to know Hamish is getting along okay."
Mary had no idea when this conversation with a father she'd never heard described had taken place. She didn't even know whether Geoff's parents knew of her existence. Undeterred, she asked, "Shall I come too?"
"Oh," he said. She could see him making connections. "Well. It's like. You see. Um."
It was odd. She'd never heard him so ineloquent. She prompted, "You think they won't like me?"
"Of course they won't," he said, a flicker of real fear tightening his brow for what she suspected was the first time in the months she'd known him. "Not because you're unlikeable, obviously, or I wouldn't be here with you. But my family is very... intimate. Cliquish. Exclusionary. Odd."
"Er... I'll be on my best behaviour."
"It doesn’t really matter. Daddy will have made up his mind within ten seconds."
"Then I'll make a good first impression."
"He can't be fooled. Believe me, I've tried," Geoff gave a long sigh. "I'm sorry, I'm not explaining this very well. It's more than that. I'm different around them. Once you meet them you'll see me in a different way and then you'll hate me and break it off and I don't want that."
Mary sat silent for a while, not really sure how to respond. They passed through a suburban lane and the trees flashed by, bare but for a few last, golden leaves.
"I want to see you from every side," she said at last. "I've liked all of them so far."
Geoff was gripping the door handle very hard, but his fingers relaxed at last. "Okay, let me talk to Dad and I'll see what he says."
The next day they bought train tickets down to London for Christmas. Over the next week Mary watched as Geoff's restraint was blown away like a damn collapsing as the lessons of his family poured out of him. And she was horrified to realise how little she knew.
"Two?" she cried, the first time he explained about his dad and daddy. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"I thought it was obvious. I’m so lousy with girls."
“No you’re not,” Mary said with a roll of her eyes, because this was an old argument, "And they're geniuses? All of them?"
Geoff waved his hand through the air. "All except Dad, he's ordinary. But Daddy is much smarter than me, Murray is a bit behind me though he won’t admit it, and Hamish it's hard to tell - he's very good at making people see what he wants them to see and we suspect he fine-tunes every test you give him. The teachers at his school say he's just above average, but he's already finished a year of a social sciences degree by distance learning. Even Uncle Mycroft didn't know that until Dad found a letter in Hamish's room asking him to join the honours program. He's fifteen."
"Okay," she said. "Okay. Well, that's amazing."
Geoff gave the long, heavy sigh that had passed his lips too many times since they’d bought the tickets to London. He ran his hands through his hair. “Alright. We’ll make rules, easy rules to follow. Talk only to Dad if it’s possible. If Hamish starts a conversation with a question, reply with questions until you can get him talking about himself. Otherwise he’ll know your life story and every secret you’ve ever kept before you notice you’ve finished your wine. Don’t talk to Murray unless you’re alone in a room with him, in which case don’t ignore him under any circumstances. And never, ever talk to daddy unless he talks to you first.”
“Is that really the impression I should give? That I don’t want to talk to him?”
“It’s the easiest way to keep him guessing. He’ll know you’re obeying my instructions, and that will impress him.”
Mary folded her arms. “Old-fashioned man, then, is he?”
“A bit, in his own way. But that’s not what it means - you see, most people, ordinary people, know how to interact with others. Not always well, but they know - they’ve learned it until it’s practically muscle-memory, and there’s instinct in it too, just like we learn to speak or run or not to wet our pants. Do you know how hard it is to control that kind of skill? To ignore it? To not need it in the first place? It takes control, it takes an enormous amount of self-awareness. Most people don’t have that. My father has that to the extreme - Dad said once that he’s probably never made an honest facial expression in his life. If you can keep your normal people-interacting-skills at bay, if you can show an iota of the control he possesses, it will get you points.”
Mary asked, as patiently as she could - and she was a patient woman, but this was a stretch - “Do you think he’ll make even the slightest attempt to like me?”
“Oh God,” Geoff groaned, pressing his hands to his mouth and glancing around the car as if he’d just realised there was a gas leak. “If he does, we’ll be in even more trouble than before.”
---
London, Christmas Eve. Snow came and went with what seemed like a malicious knowledge of the tube timetable. The streets were brown mush. Nevertheless, there were children running and screaming on the pavements, forgetting any manners they had previously been endowed with, obsessed by plots to stuff snow down younger siblings’ necks and hurl frozen wads at their shadow-eyed parents.
“This is it,” Geoff breathed in sharply and grasped Mary’s arm. “It’s not too late to go back to Cambridge and claim the train was cancelled.”
“Don’t be silly,” Mary sighed, tugging him up the steps to the cosy terrace house at the end of the row. “Your genius father will figure that lie out in a split second. And I’ve lugged our bag three blocks through the snow.”
She decided to knock, though she knew Geoff had a key. When the door opened, a small man stood there, his posture rigid but his round face smiling warmly. His hair was dusty white from brow to nape, and the canals across his face looked even older than him, as if he was babysitting the geography of some lost country. His smile broadened toothily and he held out his hand to Mary.
“John Watson. Hello.”
“Hello,” she felt her whole arm shaken in his enthusiasm. “I’m Mary. Obviously.”
He laughed like it was actually funny, and for a moment they both stood on either side of the threshold without moving. Mary was trying to remember the rules Geoff had insisted she recite by heart. Before it could become awkward, there was a jumble of footsteps down the stairs behind John and what had to be the youngest brother barrelled up behind his father. He was no longer the small child from Geoff’s photograph, already an inch taller than John and starting to widen in the shoulders, but his face matched the old man’s in his features and in his smile.
There was more hand-shaking and name-spouting and finally they were in the hall, Geoff and Hamish taking a bag each. John shut the cold outside. There were paper chains around the banister, in nine alternating shades of a colour wheel and cut into such even sizes that they might have been industrial. The air smelled of meat and tomatoes cooking in some far part of the house. Mary was led through a corridor into a roomy lounge with heavy curtains and a purring heater filling the now-decorative fireplace.
She saw first the man in the square, black chair. The whole room was centred on that chair, as if he had sat down a long time ago and the room had grown around him. There were grey ringlets arrayed artfully in his dark hair and his white hands skittered across the keyboard of the laptop that rested on his knees. He looked up at Mary for a few seconds and then returned his attention to the screen without missing a beat.
As Geoff had instructed, Mary looked away and didn’t greet him. She noticed the last person cross-legged on a beanbag in the corner. There was no doubt he was the infamous Murray, white-skinned, black-haired and thin as a toothpick in his wrists and the ankles above his bare feet. He was reading a thin hardcover and didn’t even dignify Mary with a glance.
“Sherlock,” John growled.
The laptop was snapped shut. Goeff’s father was on his feet in one swift movement and holding out both hands to grasp one of Mary’s. He positively towered, though she was not a short woman. His mouth smiled and his eyes narrowed. “Mary,” he said brightly. “It’s a pleasure.”
“Likewise,” she said, barely able to resist adding ‘sir’ on the end. She knew she was looking a bit stunned but she couldn’t seem to help it.
“Please, sit down,” one long hand was between her shoulder blades and guiding her to the rug-strewn sofa behind the door. “How was the train? Would you like a drink?”
“Good. Yes. Is it too early for wine?”
“Hamish,” Sherlock swept his hand in the direction of his youngest without looking. “Would you grab the Villa Maria in the fridge?”
Out of the corner of her eye, Mary was sure she saw John flash Sherlock a subtle thumbs up. She pretended to check her skirt so she could look down while she smiled. Geoff may have set rules for his partner, but evidently so had John.
“So,” Sherlock drew out the syllable as he settled back into his chair and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and fingertips pressed together. “Geoff didn’t say. What is it you do?”
“Uh, chemistry postdoc,” she sat on her hands to keep them from fiddling. “I’m working on solar power adaptors.”
“How delightful,” again that sharp smile, the narrowed eyes. Mary waited for him to speak again, but they both seemed to have reached the end of their scripts.
John cleared his throat and sat down on the arm of Sherlock’s chair, asking Mary how she got into chemistry. While she answered, she was keeping one ear on Geoff, who had strode in a straight line to the corner and was standing over Murray, one hand buried in his brother’s dark mat of hair. It didn’t curl the way Sherlock’s did, but looked like it was a long time since it had seen scissors or a comb.
While Mary talked about expeditions to Boston during her masters and cadium telluride substitutes, Murray was ducking his head away from Geoff’s hand and refusing to look away from his book.
“You’ve taken up the accordion again,” Murray said dryly, while Mary was trying to make a joke about her supervisor’s two-finger typing and John was giving an embarrassed laugh.
“You listened to the record?” Geoff asked.
“No,” Murray’s eyebrows lifted almost to his hairline. “Different calluses on the side of your thumb.”
“And you’re not on leave,” Geoff glanced him up and down. “So the navy thing didn’t work out, then?”
“That’s one way to put it,” Murray still hadn’t looked up from his book. “It’s not my fault they-“
John had evidently been listening as keenly as Mary, because he interrupted her and twisted his head in his sons’ direction, “Ah, Murray? Let’s not tell that one in front of guests.”
Murray closed his mouth, scowling. Hamish was suddenly by Mary’s elbow, offering a fistful of glasses from which she managed to extract one. He had a bottle of red wine under his other arm, held so precariously that she grabbed it from him before it fell. He grinned. “Pour as big a glass as you like.”
It sounded very tempting, but Geoff had warned her about Hamish, so she twisted off the cap and went with half a glass.
In the corner, Geoff still seemed determined to get something out of Murray. “I know your phone’s working.”
“Yes, no one else calls me from random Cambridge-area landlines to see if I’ll answer.”
“Aren’t you getting a bit old to play pretend?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Murray looked up at last, wrinkling his nose.
John tried to ask about where Mary grew up, though it was painfully clear that the attention of everyone in the room was on the two men in the corner even if no one was looking at them directly.
Geoff leaned down to pick at Murray’s collar, “You’ve lost almost eighteen pounds since last winter,” he said evasively.
“We-ell, yes,” Murray turned back to his book, his voice rising to a dry monotone. “Anorexia is no doubt one of the many delightful disorders the psychologists will consider,” when Geoff froze, halfway through pretending to pick a hair off Murray’s shoulder, he added. “Didn’t they say? Our fathers are thinking of having me institutionalised.”
A sucking silence. After a moment came the creak of a floorboard as Hamish straightened up and the rasp of Murray turning a page. Distantly, Mary wondered if she could hear the black tolling of a church bell.
John cleared his throat again. “Hamish, you wanna take Mary, show her the guest room? Please,” he added, with a croak at the end.
Hamish put the wine bottle down on the coffee table with a soft clink.
Upstairs, the youngest Holmes-Watson ushered her through the corridors like he was a tourist guide who’d done this a thousand times before, his voice expressive but his mind still downstairs with the rest of his family. “Bathroom,” he pointed. “Yours and Geoff’s. Murray and me - Murray and I,” he corrected himself, “we’ll use the downstairs one while you’re here. This is the spare room, used to be Dad and Daddy’s bedroom ‘til they moved down into the study,” he dumped the bags in the blandly decorated guestroom. Mary had barely noticed he’d carried them both up here under his long arms. Her mind was downstairs as well. “That’s my room. This is Geoff and Murray’s room. Used to be. Just Murray’s now, Geoff moved out when I was nine.”
He seemed to be reminding himself of that even though it had been years ago. He wandered across to Murray’s neatly made bed and sat on the edge, fingers knotted and pressed to his lips. Mary shifted a pile of science journals off a wicker chair by the window and sat down. For a while they both stayed silent, straining to listen, but there was only the wail of a far-off ambulance. Within a couple of minutes there were footsteps on the stairs and they looked up as Geoff pushed the door open.
“Is it true?” Hamish croaked.
“They were thinking about it. Thinking,” Geoff scowled. His voice was toneless, like Murray’s had been, like his father’s. He hadn’t lied. Mary could already see he was different around them. He paced the length of the room, glancing at Murray’s blank walls and jars of plants on the windowsill, analysing and collecting data. “They didn’t make any decisions,” he shook his head. “I bet they cleared the internet history. That would have tipped him off.”
“You won’t let them, though,” Hamish pulled his legs up onto the bed, resting his chin on his knees. “Geoff? You talked them out of it, didn’t you?”
“Tell me what happened,” Geoff demanded. “Tell me what’s brought this on.”
“What, like it’s not plain as day…”
“It isn’t to me,” Geoff snapped, gesturing around his head as if to swat away bothersome insects. “You’re all trying to fool each other, Dad’s the only one who isn’t reconstructing his surroundings to pretend things are okay. I don’t have enough information to make a deduction.”
Hamish squirmed, flopped backwards onto Murray’s bed, stretching his legs out. He spoke to the ceiling. “The navy thing - I don’t know all the details. No one tells me stuff. I figured out that it involved a stolen helicopter, one of Murray’s druggie girlfriends, and that Mycroft had to pull strings to get some charges dropped. They brought Murray home three months ago and he hasn’t left the house once that I’ve seen. Then last week he had an overdose.”
Geoff’s head snapped up. “What?”
“In this bedroom. I was at school, Dad was at the hospital. Murray didn’t mean to do it, I’m sure he didn’t. He tried to ring the landline before he passed out and Daddy found him with a note pinned to his shirt. He’d managed to write down the exact volume and composition of what he’d taken but I don’t think he knew what it would do until it was in his system,” Hamish covered his face with his hands.
“But he’s okay?”
“He was fine. He got to hospital, he’s fine, Geoff.”
“Where the hell did he get it? I thought he was clean, I thought that was all years ago…”
“We can’t watch him every second of the day,” Hamish raised his head, dropped it back onto the duvet.
“Hence professional help,” Geoff muttered. “Hence talk of institutions.”
For a minute there was a heavy silence, and then a soft knock on the door. John stuck his head inside. The cheer that he’d exuded earlier was gone but he still looked stoic. “Dinner’s pretty much ready guys,” he said, flashing Mary a pained smile.
Hamish and Geoff set the table. Christmas Eve dinner was casserole and boiled potatoes with lots of herbs. No one talked much, except John directing his sons to take this-or-that to the table or get salt and pepper out of the pantry. Everyone served themselves except Mary and Murray, who were each given a large plateful by John.
“Thanks,” Mary murmured.
John looked like he might be going to say something, perhaps apologise or try to explain, but Mary shook her head, don’t worry about it, and he went back to his seat.
Hamish managed to get the conversation going again by asking about the Anticlap. Geoff talked about aesthetic experiments and gig dates and the instinctual brilliance of their new producer.
“Will you go on tour with Geoff?” Hamish asked, turning to Mary suddenly.
Mary shook her head. “I can’t take the time off work. I’m sure we’ll manage.”
“Putting work first, very good idea,” Murray cut in. It was the first time he’d spoken during the meal and both his fathers gave him a warning glance. He skewered a tiny fragment of potato on the end of his fork. “I’m sure I don’t need to tell you, Mary, you should always put work first with this family. And whatever you do, don’t breed into it.”
“Murray,” John choked, putting his knife down with a clang. “Can you stop, please.”
“I’m giving her fair warning,” Murray replied lightly. “It was more than you got.”
Geoff stood up, shoving his chair back hard. Hamish, who was sitting beside Mary, seemed to shrink down under the table. In the split second before Geoff could say anything, an old-fashioned trill filled the air. Sherlock, who had been slicing up a piece of gravy-covered beef as if nothing untoward was happening, put down his utensils and reached into his pocket to withdraw a slim black mobile.
“Sherlock Holmes speaking.”
There was the buzz of someone at the other end.
“Can it wait until tomorrow? I’m in the middle of dinner.”
“It’s Christmas tomorrow,” John reminded him. Sherlock didn’t seem to hear him, because the next moment he spoke to the phone.
“I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
John gaped at him. “Sherlock!”
“The snow’s getting to the crime scene,” Sherlock said as if this was an excuse. He put the phone in his coat and stood smoothly, sweeping his coat off the back of the chair. “Do you want to come?”
“We’ve got guests to take care of!” John flapped his hand towards the room at large.
“Can I come?” asked Murray.
Sherlock turned in the doorway, wrapping a dark red scarf around his head. He made a disdainful face. “I would prefer you apologise to the rest of the table, but if you really find that so detestable then yes, you should probably come.”
Murray jumped to his feet and pushed past Geoff. John started to protest, but the two of them were already out the door. Hamish was almost under the table now. John had buried his face in his hands.
Geoff was still standing, but Mary had never seen such blankness on his face, twitching with something dark and indescribable underneath the surface. After a moment he stormed out.
“Geoff!” John yelled.
“I need to think!” Geoff bellowed back before the front door shut for the second time in as many minutes.
John pushed his chair back, grabbing for his own pale-brown jacket on a hook by the door, and then slinging Geoff’s coat over his arm too, “Oh, Christ,” he turned back to Mary. “I am so sorry. Finish eating and make yourself at home, um,” he pinched the bridge of his nose. “Hamish will show you where the kettle is. Um. I’ll be back. Again, I’m sorry.”
And then he, too, was gone. Hamish slowly sat up, staring at his plate of cooling food. He looked at Mary. “It usually turns out alright,” he tapped his fingers on the table. “Cup of tea?”
---
The terrace house that had been warm and welcoming before now seemed empty and lifeless. Mary sat in the guest room unpacking her and Geoff’s bags, though she wondered if there was much point. They’d meant to stay until New Years’ but now… well, she didn’t know. Was this ordinary for the Holmes-Watsons, was it really how Geoff thought families should behave? And could she bear to stay even if it was? She couldn’t stand her own family complications, let alone those belonging to other people.
She had texted Geoff’s mobile twice without answer, but this time she rung it and heard a faint buzzing. She followed it and found he’d left the damn thing in his bag. Mary sat on the carpet and rested her head against the smooth duvet. She couldn’t keep Murray’s words out of her head. Whatever you do, don’t breed into this family.
“Stop it,” she rubbed at her eye. “He’s just as much Geoff as he was yesterday.”
She pulled out a pile of student essays she’d brought to mark and started to go through them, but she couldn’t concentrate. Finally she decided to take a shower to clear her head. She changed into her dressing gown and wandered down the corridor with the towel John had laid out on the bed.
“Oh--”
“Oh, Jesus!”
Mary jumped backwards, covering her eyes before she realised Hamish was not indecent. He was, when she looked again, sitting on the bathroom window. His face was flushed pink, his knobbly knees were drawn up almost to his ears and there was a distinct smell of burning tobacco in the air.
Mary narrowed her eyes. She came into the bathroom, shut the door and cocked her head at Hamish. “Were you smoking?”
“I thought you were asleep,” he said, going pinker if that was possible.
“Did you drop the cigarette out the window?” Mary growled. “You could cause a fire!”
“I made sure it fell on the gravel,” Hamish leaned precariously out the window to check. “I will need to go get it, though. Daddy doesn’t miss these things.”
Mary sat herself on the edge of the bathtub with a sigh. “Your dad’s a doctor, Hamish. Why on earth are you smoking?”
Hamish gave an embarrassed chuckle. “Surely that’s obvious even to you. Everyone else in this family has problems, I’m just trying to get attention.”
She laughed into her hand. “Yes. I can see how that’d be difficult.”
“You have no idea,” Hamish leaned back against the window frame, staring out over the London rooftops. “I know what we’re like, but I hope you do stick with Geoff, start a family with him. I think it’ll be good to have a back-up in case this one implodes. Murray - he forgets that it’s Dad who keeps the rest of us sane. Stabilising effect and all. You could do the same.”
“Um,” she shrugged. “Thanks.”
Mary didn’t know what to say. John seemed to do alright, didn’t he? He’d stuck with Geoff’s father for more than twenty-seven years. How did he do it? What was she not seeing? What had John experienced, out in the world, that made this family preferable? She resolved that she would ask him, before she let things go further with Geoff. She would ask John to talk about Sherlock, not specifics, just get him talking. And then she would, as Geoff always said, make a deduction - whether it was worth it or not. Whether it was love keeping John here or fear of loneliness and unfamiliarity. Whether John regretted any of it. Mary had always avoided domestic conflict, but this one was also new to her, and she was curious by nature. She wanted to know the truth before she bolted.
After a few moments of silence, Murray twisted his head around and jumped down onto the tiled floor. “I should let you take that shower. Sorry about the ciggy smell.”
Mary didn’t see him again that night. She fell asleep in the guest room with essays spilling out of her hands, and woke to voices in the hall outside. She waited for her eyes to adjust in the darkness. The lamp by the side of the bed was off, the papers stacked neatly on the floor with her red pen resting on top. Geoff must have found her snoring and tucked her in. She pushed back the covers and padded to the door, which was open the tiniest crack, a line of light so thin it might have been drawn with a ballpoint.
She recognised Geoff’s voice, though Murray’s was so similar she almost couldn’t separate them. They were whispering, clear and cutting through the silent house.
“Daddy solved the case, then?”
Murray snorted. “Yes. Trivial. A typical domestic with a moderately clever cover-up.”
“Did you help?”
“Obviously.”
“It’s sad,” Geoff said, blank and cold. “You’re trying to be just like him, but it’s like a joke. Like you’re a caricature. Why can’t you just be your own person?”
“Oh, that’s hypocrisy for you!” Murray snarled back. “Look at you, pretending to be ordinary, playing house like a sitcom boyfriend! At least I don’t spend all day looking down at people, faking idiocy, faking love-“
“I do love Mary.”
“No, you just don’t find her quite as dull as you find everyone else.”
“You think that’s what our father thinks of Dad? Do you really believe that? That’s ridiculous. Have never in your entire life actually liked anyone, Murray?”
“I liked you,” Murray cried, raising his voice above a whisper. “I liked you. But you ran away.”
Geoff didn’t reply. Mary wished she could see through the solid wood of the door, see what Geoff’s face was saying, see whether he was hugging Murray or balling his fists. But she couldn’t, so she crossed the unfamiliar room and slid back into bed. Geoff came in soon enough, and she stayed still as if she was asleep, miserably aware that he must know she was faking it. He knew everything, didn’t he? That’s what this family of geniuses was like.
Geoff curled up against her. “We’ll go home tomorrow,” he whispered. “I’m sorry. I should have known it would be like this.”
“I can go home if you want to stay and sort it out,” she rolled over a little. “I don’t mind Christmas alone, that’s normal fare for me.”
He didn’t answer.
---
Mary expected the brothers to avoid each other the next morning, but they all rose at the same time like clockwork. John was already up and making enough toast, eggs and tea to feed an army, and they all settled in the lounge with plates on their knees. Geoff and Murray weren’t talking to each other, but Hamish and John kept up the conversation without a pause and Mary joined in as best she could. The snow had stopped during the night and outside the white frosting glistened, too early to be marred by tyre tracks and the over flow from gutters.
Sherlock drifted in eventually, the tails of his blue silk gown trailing after him. He draped himself over his chair with his hands forming a steeple against his lips. John got up and leaned over him, hands propped on the arms of the chair. “Are you hungry?”
“Hmm?” Sherlock didn’t seem to be properly awake yet. “No.”
In another part of the house, a landline rung and Mary jumped like it was an emergency siren. John grumbled and wandered off to answer it.
“You better book your tickets soon, Geoff,” Murray said. “If you’re going to get back to Cambridge today.”
“Got stick your head in a bucket of ice,” Geoff snapped back.
“Boys,” Sherlock drawled.
Mary looked up as John arrived in the doorway, the cordless hanging from one hand. There were new lines around his mouth that hadn’t been there a moment ago. Before she could ask what was wrong, Murray and Geoff were at it again.
Geoff started it this time, “I don’t see why it’s so much more exhausting to fake being a git than to fake being half decent.”
“Being a git’s in my blood.”
“Last I checked, you’re only half consulting detective.”
Sherlock clicked his fingers, “This is a completely pointless discussion which you will both stop immediately.”
Murray snorted, “That’s the only way to communicate with Geoff these days, by being pointless decoration.”
“Don’t you dare bring Mary into this again-“
“You thought I was talking about Mary? Maybe I meant your music. Though clearly if that’s what you think of Mary-“
“I swear, Murray, I will-“
“Oh stop it, all of you!” Hamish cried, leaping to his feet. There was a sob in his voice. He was staring at John. “Mrs Hudson has died.”
All eyes turned to John, even Sherlock, who sat up so quickly he almost slid off his chair.
“No other reason for someone to call the house at Christmas with bad news, and Harry and Mycroft are both healthy,” Sherlock said quietly, apparently used to explaining his deductions aloud.
John nodded silently. Hamish crossed the room in three steps and threw his arms around his neck. His dad rubbed his back in slow circles.
“How?” Geoff demanded. “She’s still fit as an ox!”
“She has an emergency beeper,” Murray added. “I check the batteries every time I see her.”
“They think it was a stroke,” John shrugged, “Her beeper was activated but it happened too fast. Hamish, let’s go sit on the couch, my knees are about to crumple.”
Half carrying his youngest, John manoeuvred them across the room and collapsed onto the sofa with Hamish still clinging to him.
“We were going to go see her this afternoon,” Sherlock whispered, staring at the heater in the defunct fireplace.
“W-we should have b-been taking care of her!” Hamish sobbed into John’s neck.
“Hey, hey,” John wriggled into a more comfortable position. “It’s not anyone’s fault.”
“B-but we might have spotted early symptoms,” Hamish curled up in John’s arms, like an enormous leggy insect, still hiding his face. “We might have saved her.”’
John ran his hands through his youngest’s hair, murmuring, “She liked living on her own, Hamish, she didn’t want anyone telling her what to do.”
“Why did they call here?” Sherlock asked, after almost a minute of silence had been broken only by Hamish’s fading sniffles.
John smiled sadly. “No next of kin. Just us.”
“They’ll want us to help clear her place,” Geoff mumbled. “There’ll be things to sort out,” he looked at Mary. “I’ll have to stay in London a few more days.”
“Of course we will,” Mary said with hesitation, grasping his hand. She didn’t know who ‘Mrs Hudson’ was but her importance was clear even to someone who wasn’t a super-genius.
For a few minutes there was silence. Hamish wouldn’t let John go, and his dad spoke at last. “Cheer up, kiddo.”
“Why?” Hamish’s voice was muffled, his face still hidden. “No one even wants to be here. What’s the point?”
“I’ll tell you a story. A nice story,” John offered plaintively. He twisted to look at Sherlock with a wince, and mouthed, what do I say?
Sherlock took up the reigns. “How much do you know about when I went away, Hamish? Before you were born?”
“Hang on, that’s not a nice story,” John frowned.
But the teenager raised his head, wiping his nose on the back of his hand. “Not much. None of you talk about it.”
“Not a nice story at all,” John repeated.
“Well, it’s got a happy ending,” Sherlock raised his eyebrows. “Though it doesn’t start well from my perspective.”
“He didn’t ‘go away’,” Murray supplied. “He jumped off a building.”
Geoff propped his chin on his hand and explained to Mary. “He killed himself right in front of Dad. Faked his own suicide, to protect a bunch of people from this bastard who wanted to kill them. It’s rather complicated. I was ten, Murray was eight.”
Mary put her hand over her mouth. “You didn’t see it…?”
“No, we were at the police station,” Geoff glancing at the ceiling, recalling the day in his mind. “We’d woken up the night before to find Dad and Daddy had run away from the police.”
“Sherlock’s idea,” John cut in.
“I was buying us time to stop Moriarty,” Sherlock countered defensively.
“Anyway, DI Lestrade wanted to keep an eye on us so he took us to the police station because he knew our fathers would turn themselves in sooner or later,” Murray explained.
“But Daddy knew Moriarty would kill everyone if he didn’t jump off the roof of the hospital,” Geoff said quietly.
“Not us,” Murray corrected. “He wasn’t going to kill us.”
“No, he wasn’t,” Sherlock said bitterly, his brow twisting. “He thought you two would be too interesting, once you’d grown up.”
“I’d kill him twice if I could,” John muttered. “I’d kill him three times. I had to go to my sons and tell them… tell that what had happened.”
“But Daddy wasn’t really dead?” Hamish prompted. “He came back, right?”
“Not for a long time,” John whispered into his hair, clutching Hamish tight. “He had to make sure Moriarty’s men weren’t waiting for him.”
“We didn’t think he was dead,” Murray said scornfully.
Geoff nodded. “We knew he’d faked it. We made Mycroft give us the CCTV footage from the nearest camera. Daddy had picked a black spot in the network.”
“I stole all the photographs from the evidence files at the police station,” Murray said proudly.
“I got the autopsy report. Clearly fake,” Geoff added. “I confronted Molly Hooper, too. Clearly lying.”
“And the paramedics who took the body didn’t exist,” Murray said. “I stuck my thumb in my mouth, widened my eyes and walked all around the hospital asking for the men who’d taken my daddy away. The doctors looked everywhere for them but nobody on staff had been at the scene.”
John shook his head. “You two… Christ. You have no idea how difficult you were. I just wanted you to move on, I just wanted you to grieve, and I’d walk in to find you staring at pictures of your father’s dead body… God, you worried me…”
“My sons,” Sherlock said proudly, winking at Mary.
“What happened then?” Hamish insisted, sitting up a little.
“No one would believe us,” Geoff sighed. He shifted to the edge of his seat. Murray got up, dragged the beanbag over and sat it next to Geoff so they could both talk to Hamish at once. Geoff spread his arms, “We knew we were right, but no one would take us seriously, and we were never sure if Mycroft was in on it or not. But finally Dad played along. When we couldn’t sleep he’d sit up and tell us stories about what Daddy was doing, how he was in Tibet or Argentina, how he was fighting all the branches of Moriarty’s network…”
“He stole most of the stories from Tintin,” Murray winced.
“Only a couple!” John protested.
“And all the while, little Hamish was getting bigger and bigger inside him,” Geoff leaned forward.
“What, really?” Hamish straightened up and turned to look at Sherlock. “Did you know?” he demanded.
Sherlock shook his head.
“We knew we had to tell him,” Murray wriggled until he was cross-legged on the beanbag, shoulder almost brushing Geoff’s as he gesticulated. “We were sure if he knew about Hamish he’d come back.”
“So we tried to contact all the people who owed him anything, asking them to find him and give him the message,” Geoff scratched his head. “In hindsight, it was a bit dangerous.”
“-A bit!” John spluttered.
“Irene Adler. Shinwell Johnson. Major Barrymore. I have no doubt that your youth and innocuous appearance was the only thing that kept you out of serious trouble,” Sherlock shook his head.
“Which was all for nothing,” John grouched. “Sherlock figured it out from the way I was writing in my blog, though he got the date a bit late.”
“You were you all on your own?” Hamish asked, staring at John as if seeing something in his face that had hitherto been invisible. “When you had me?”
John nodded, looking at an empty part of the wallpaper across the room. “All on my own, little man. It was funny, a part of me didn’t believe you were real, even though they’d checked you on ultrasound and all that. It was like Geoff and Murray had created a make-believe Sherlock to keep me sane, but the make-believe had bled into you as well… I felt like you were a promise I knew was going to be broken, that when it was time for your arrival you’d just slip through my fingers and I’d wake up into a world where the last trace of Sherlock was gone,” he shook his head.
Geoff and Murray were watching his face. Sherlock was looking at John’s hands. John raised one and scrubbed his palm over his cheek. “Even when I realised I needed to go to the hospital… I dropped Geoff and Murray off at Harry’s, and then I ended up at a park, just sitting on the grass watching an under fifteen footy game, Totteridge versus Belmont, I remember it. I didn’t want that game to end even though I was starting to hurt pretty damn sharply. Some part of me was so sure that when it ended both Sherlock and the little man inside me would be gone, it would truly be over. I couldn’t even stand up afterwards. Two of the mums found me and drove me to the ED. It could have ended really badly but it was alright. You were screaming just like your brothers had when they brought you over to show me,” he tightened his arm around Hamish’s waist. “You weren’t a dream. Sherlock was still gone but you were real, and that was all that mattered.”
He fell silent. No one picked up the story - none of them knew it like John did. He shook his head. “I was just so tired after that, I don’t remember much for a while.”
“So then you came back,” Hamish frowned at his father.
Sherlock nodded. “I thought it was safe by then. I came back as soon as I could.”
John smiled and squeezed Hamish’s shoulder. The warmth was back in his face. “I was out of hospital and taking you for your first walk around the block. I was all worried because you didn’t cry as much as these two blighters,” he jabbed his thumb at Geoff and Murray. “And then I came around the corner and there he was, your daddy. Like he’d never left. He had to take you out of my arms because I thought I was going to fall over, and then of course I couldn’t punch the sod for leaving because you can’t punch a man holding a baby. I’ll never forget the look on his face,” he stared at Sherlock, as if he still couldn’t believe the man in front of him was alive. “And he was real and you were real and I finally realised it wasn’t a dream after all. Thing was, the boys and their mad stories had primed me to be ready, in a way. Sherlock coming back felt like the only fair outcome. I don’t know how I would have survived the shock otherwise,” he shook his head. “You all saved me, in so many different ways.”
Mary watched them as they became quiet, looking at each other with expressions that were impossible to interpret. The strangest and most impossible family in existence. She didn’t need to talk to John after all, she’d made her deduction. It was obvious even when you weren’t a genius.
Murray rubbed his eyes. “We should open presents. I’ve got one for you and Mary, Geoff. I’ll go find it.”
---
One Year Later
There was a last-minute committee Mary had to attend, for one of the PhD students she co-supervised. Geoff had taken the train down to London early, and now she had to find her way to the strange address all on her own. There was no snow this year, but there were still children out with their exhausted parents bundled up tight and breathing fog. The trees were lit with coloured bulbs and cloth banners with cheery angels flapped from the streetlamps. She sighed with relief when the sign ‘Baker St’ finally appeared in the distance, tightening her scarf and pulling her hat lower over her ears. This was it.
It looked a lot smaller than the brick place on a corner where they had spent the last Christmas. It turned out that in her will, Mrs Hudson had left her whole house to John and Sherlock, and they had decided to move into the top two floors where Geoff and Murray had been raised (they were still deciding whether to rent out the other two flats or not). It was going to be a bit of a squash, Geoff had said; only Hamish and their fathers lived in the two-bedroom apartment now, so Mary and Geoff would sleep on the fold-out couch and Murray had his own flat to go back to across town. The brick house where Geoff had spent his teenage years was currently on the market.
“Murray’s joined the police force,” he had reported a few months earlier, complete shock on his face as he put down the phone after a conversation with John.
“How long do you think that will last?” Mary asked.
“I have no data for this scenario,” Geoff sounded dizzy. “I don’t know.”
But the middle Watson-Holmes son hadn’t been kicked out so far. Everyone was keeping their fingers crossed.
Mary raised her hand to rap on the door below the digits 221B, before she noticed a folded piece of paper under the knocker. She pulled it out and opened it. Key under mat.
Rolling her eyes, she crouched down and fumbled for the key through her thick woollen gloves. The lock turned smoothly and she headed through the hall. Someone above was playing a violin. “Geoff?” she called, and the music stopped.
The stairway was worn and splintery, the wallpaper faded and scarred. She took off her hat as she pushed open the door at the top and stuck her head inside. Not Geoff, but Sherlock, stood in front of her. He raised his bow to continue the music at a softer tone as he acknowledged her with a nod that didn’t break his rhythm, then turned back to the window, fingers flying across the strings. The flat was tiny compared to their previous home, the pattern on the walls grim and the doorways scarred with years of use. Cramped shelves lined the walls from skirting boards to ceiling, while papers, books and bits of Hamish’s school uniform covered every available surface. There were boxes still unpacked under the only table and equations scrawled in red marker on the window. It seemed like a strange place for them to retire to, though it must have been even stranger to be born and raised here.
“Hello, Mary,” John appeared in a double doorway that lead to a cramped kitchen. He was in a striped yellow apron and held up his hands to show they were covered with flour, but pecked her on the cheek when she leaned in to give him a perfunctory hug anyway. “The boys all went down for a last-minute supermarket run, they should be back soon. Your meeting go well?”
“As well as it could have,” Mary unwound her scarf and hung up her coat and the rest of her warm clothes. She stood on the threshold between the two rooms, watching Sherlock’s melody crescendo and fade from a final sharp note. He turned towards Mary and his gaze flicked across her hands and face.
“I see you’re keeping a secret from Geoff,” he said.
“Oh, Christ, don’t you dare,” she twisted her hands together.
The corner of his mouth twitched in a smile. “I won’t tell. Got a ring?”
“I thought I’d just ask him straight out,” Mary chewed on the inside of her cheek. “He doesn’t wear jewellery anyway.”
“Ask what?” John appeared behind her.
“Never mind, John, you’ll find out later,” Sherlock said quickly, raising the violin again.
“Oh fine, yes, I’ll just go back to kitchen,” John threw up his hands and ambled over to the bench where he was rolling up meatballs. “No need to keep me in the loop,” he called.
Sherlock smiled and glanced at Mary once more before he rested the bow over the strings. A slight frown tightened between his eyes. “Two secrets.”
“Sorry?”
“You don’t know?” Sherlock drew his head back. “Oh, well.”
“Know what?”
“Nothing.”
Sherlock was playing again, chinrest tucked tight up against his neck. Mary took a couple of steps towards him. “Know what?” she repeated.
John, stripped of the apron, came up beside her and handed her a glass of merlot. “Here we are. What’s he said that’s got you flustered?”
“He’s not telling me something,” Mary said, wrapping the fingers around the glass. “One of his deductions.”
“Ah, well, I can deal with that,” John slipped up close to Sherlock and curled one arm around his neck, getting in the way of his bow-arm. “Tell her.”
“It’s not my place,” Sherlock grumbled, forced to abort his playing while John was tangling him up.
“Tell her, or else,” John leaned in to kiss him. Mary sipped at her wine and looked away; watching other people kiss always made her uncomfortable, let alone when they were her in-laws. Would be her in-laws. If Geoff said yes. Why wouldn’t he say yes? Oh God, he probably already knew, just like his father. What was she getting herself into?
All those concerns went out the window (and the wine in her mouth was spat back into the glass) when Sherlock said with a broad grin at John, “We’re going to be grandparents.”
Fandom: Sherlock (BBC)
Rating: G
Warnings: Brief mentions of an ED and drug abuse
Notes: Almost a year ago now, I wrote a fill for a Sherlock prompt that asked for kid!fic. This is the sequel, and you can find the original here - this sequel will make a lot more sense if you read it first. It’s basically if Sherlock and John had real life problems instead of (or as well as) criminal adventures. After the wonderful Maruo contacted me and translated the fic into Chinsese ( here - requires a login) I ended up writing a sequel for the lovely community over there, which I’ve now cleaned up and am finally posting in English. They also produced the most beautiful fanart ( here by Calita and here by 标准间住户 if you scroll down). This is really a great big thank you to my translator and everyone else in the 221D forums.
Summary: One Christmas in the Holmes-Watson house sees Geoff bring home a lady. John does his best, Sherlock mostly does as he’s told, but Murray fails utterly to be welcoming.
When Mary first met Geoff, she thought he was mad. She didn't know, yet, that he had been struggling with madness - both internally and externally - for most of his life.
They met at a wedding; not their own, obviously (that was still two years away). Mary had a step-cousin who was disliked by her mother and aunts. Her mother and aunts had therefore bullied her into representing them because the cousin, against all familial good sense, was quite fond of Mary. Geoff was an old school-friend of the groom's who had been invited because the groom wanted to save money on musician hire by having him serenade the bride up the aisle. At the reception they were seated together at a table of mismatched extras with no dates.
"This is Geoff Watson," said Mary's cousin. "He's the lead singer of Anticlap."
"What the hell's that?" Mary asked.
"Actually it's the Anticlap," Geoff corrected. "As in Gonorrhea."
Mary's cousin's smile faltered for a moment, but then returned brighter than ever. "The Anticlap are amazing, Mary. Haven't you heard them on the web? They're all over the networks. Two number one singles this year, right Geoff?"
"To date," Geoff said blandly, staring at the groom on the far side of the tent.
"Geoff was going to play at the ceremony, but he lost his voice just this morning," Mary's cousin explained uncertainly.
"Can't sing a note," Geoff agreed, and coughed unconvincingly.
They were the only two people at the table under the age of fifty, but Geoff's answers to Mary's questions about his band were stilted. Finally, sick of one-word replies and shrugs, she asked, "Why'd you really refuse to sing?"
Geoff looked at her, pressed his lips together for a moment and then replied, "I was at the rehearsal this morning and observed certain details about the groom's mobile, the wedding rings and the best man. The groom is sleeping with another woman and has just found out she's pregnant. The song they asked me to sing had an inappropriate fidelity theme."
"My God," Mary breathed. "Why didn't you tell her? My cousin? That's what they have the 'speak now' bit for, for chrissake-"
"Why? She enjoyed today. And now that they're married the courts will give her a percentage of his not inconsiderable assets when he files for divorce. She'll need it, since judging by the amount of stolen stationary in their front room and the new bottle of folate tablets in the pantry, she's left her job to become a mother. She's not pregnant yet though, given the amount of wine she's already consumed, so it'll all be neat and tidy."
Mary stared at him. Then she drank her own glass of Pinot Gris in four gulps and went to tell her cousin the bad news.
It was not a solid basis for a relationship, but Mary asked Geoff to dinner that Friday in order to interrogate him on exactly how he'd worked out about the groom's other woman (it had all turned out to be true, down to the last detail). Within two weeks she was in love with him and in a month they were exclusive. Mary was thirty-one that year, Geoff twenty-six. The first time they slept together, he narrated the entire time. Afterwards he admitted that she was his first. She would never have believed this, except that Geoff was entirely adverse to hyperbole.
"No, you're joking," she said. "Look at you. You're a six-foot-two, genius musician and you're gorgeous, women throw themselves at you. I've seen them do it."
"I swear it's true."
"How?"
Geoff shrugged, smoothing out the sheet between them. "I mostly find most people to be mostly dull."
She decided to take that as a compliment.
The wedding of the lost voice had taken place in March. By November, Geoff and Mary were living together in a flat in Cambridge, close enough for Mary to walk to the campus where she worked. Their routines were as familiar as if they'd been together for many years. They were both morning people and both avid wine drinkers. They both wanted a large dog but the landlord forbade it. They both abhorred social events, preferring to sit at home and read even if it meant they didn't speak for entire evenings. Neither of them liked photographs of themselves, so there were none of either in the house. There were photographs of Mary's sisters, who lived in Toronta and Dubai, and of her grandmother, whom she was very fond of. Geoff said he had no living grandparents, but there was a picture he'd put up in the front hall of a scowling, black-haired teenager hugging a beaming younger boy to his chest.
"My little brothers," he explained. Other than that she got only glimpses of his family: he regularly spoke on the phone to someone he called "Dad" (or more rarely, "Daddy") and he would let slip obtuse statements like "Dad liked the new album," or "I wish Daddy would stop stalking our fanblogs." She figured out that his middle brother had been at Oxford but left, or possibly failed, under grim circumstances, while his youngest brother was still in high school. She knew nothing more than that.
But Geoff rarely talked about anything in detail unless it was his art so Mary didn't think much of his reticence. She liked to hear him talk about music, which she didn't understand in the slightest. She had played the clarinet for three years in primary school but suspected she was tone deaf and could never hear the worlds of meaning in songs the way Geoff did. Geoff talked about music the way Stephen Hawking used to talk about non-Newtonian physics, with equal parts wondrous passion and intense curiosity.
That November, however, she had one important question about his family. She had had three requests from her own parents to come home to Manchester for the break and she desperately needed a way to avoid a forth. She liked her sisters and her grandmother but not the generation in the middle, her mother and three cackling, married aunts whose own offspring had grown up and escaped years ago. So finally she waited until she was driving Geoff home from the studio where the Anticlap practiced, then came straight out and asked, "What are your plans for Christmas, Geoff?"
"I usually go home to my parents' house."
"They're in London, right?"
"Yeah. Dad said Murray will definitely be there, and I haven't talked to him in ages. And I like to know Hamish is getting along okay."
Mary had no idea when this conversation with a father she'd never heard described had taken place. She didn't even know whether Geoff's parents knew of her existence. Undeterred, she asked, "Shall I come too?"
"Oh," he said. She could see him making connections. "Well. It's like. You see. Um."
It was odd. She'd never heard him so ineloquent. She prompted, "You think they won't like me?"
"Of course they won't," he said, a flicker of real fear tightening his brow for what she suspected was the first time in the months she'd known him. "Not because you're unlikeable, obviously, or I wouldn't be here with you. But my family is very... intimate. Cliquish. Exclusionary. Odd."
"Er... I'll be on my best behaviour."
"It doesn’t really matter. Daddy will have made up his mind within ten seconds."
"Then I'll make a good first impression."
"He can't be fooled. Believe me, I've tried," Geoff gave a long sigh. "I'm sorry, I'm not explaining this very well. It's more than that. I'm different around them. Once you meet them you'll see me in a different way and then you'll hate me and break it off and I don't want that."
Mary sat silent for a while, not really sure how to respond. They passed through a suburban lane and the trees flashed by, bare but for a few last, golden leaves.
"I want to see you from every side," she said at last. "I've liked all of them so far."
Geoff was gripping the door handle very hard, but his fingers relaxed at last. "Okay, let me talk to Dad and I'll see what he says."
The next day they bought train tickets down to London for Christmas. Over the next week Mary watched as Geoff's restraint was blown away like a damn collapsing as the lessons of his family poured out of him. And she was horrified to realise how little she knew.
"Two?" she cried, the first time he explained about his dad and daddy. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"I thought it was obvious. I’m so lousy with girls."
“No you’re not,” Mary said with a roll of her eyes, because this was an old argument, "And they're geniuses? All of them?"
Geoff waved his hand through the air. "All except Dad, he's ordinary. But Daddy is much smarter than me, Murray is a bit behind me though he won’t admit it, and Hamish it's hard to tell - he's very good at making people see what he wants them to see and we suspect he fine-tunes every test you give him. The teachers at his school say he's just above average, but he's already finished a year of a social sciences degree by distance learning. Even Uncle Mycroft didn't know that until Dad found a letter in Hamish's room asking him to join the honours program. He's fifteen."
"Okay," she said. "Okay. Well, that's amazing."
Geoff gave the long, heavy sigh that had passed his lips too many times since they’d bought the tickets to London. He ran his hands through his hair. “Alright. We’ll make rules, easy rules to follow. Talk only to Dad if it’s possible. If Hamish starts a conversation with a question, reply with questions until you can get him talking about himself. Otherwise he’ll know your life story and every secret you’ve ever kept before you notice you’ve finished your wine. Don’t talk to Murray unless you’re alone in a room with him, in which case don’t ignore him under any circumstances. And never, ever talk to daddy unless he talks to you first.”
“Is that really the impression I should give? That I don’t want to talk to him?”
“It’s the easiest way to keep him guessing. He’ll know you’re obeying my instructions, and that will impress him.”
Mary folded her arms. “Old-fashioned man, then, is he?”
“A bit, in his own way. But that’s not what it means - you see, most people, ordinary people, know how to interact with others. Not always well, but they know - they’ve learned it until it’s practically muscle-memory, and there’s instinct in it too, just like we learn to speak or run or not to wet our pants. Do you know how hard it is to control that kind of skill? To ignore it? To not need it in the first place? It takes control, it takes an enormous amount of self-awareness. Most people don’t have that. My father has that to the extreme - Dad said once that he’s probably never made an honest facial expression in his life. If you can keep your normal people-interacting-skills at bay, if you can show an iota of the control he possesses, it will get you points.”
Mary asked, as patiently as she could - and she was a patient woman, but this was a stretch - “Do you think he’ll make even the slightest attempt to like me?”
“Oh God,” Geoff groaned, pressing his hands to his mouth and glancing around the car as if he’d just realised there was a gas leak. “If he does, we’ll be in even more trouble than before.”
---
London, Christmas Eve. Snow came and went with what seemed like a malicious knowledge of the tube timetable. The streets were brown mush. Nevertheless, there were children running and screaming on the pavements, forgetting any manners they had previously been endowed with, obsessed by plots to stuff snow down younger siblings’ necks and hurl frozen wads at their shadow-eyed parents.
“This is it,” Geoff breathed in sharply and grasped Mary’s arm. “It’s not too late to go back to Cambridge and claim the train was cancelled.”
“Don’t be silly,” Mary sighed, tugging him up the steps to the cosy terrace house at the end of the row. “Your genius father will figure that lie out in a split second. And I’ve lugged our bag three blocks through the snow.”
She decided to knock, though she knew Geoff had a key. When the door opened, a small man stood there, his posture rigid but his round face smiling warmly. His hair was dusty white from brow to nape, and the canals across his face looked even older than him, as if he was babysitting the geography of some lost country. His smile broadened toothily and he held out his hand to Mary.
“John Watson. Hello.”
“Hello,” she felt her whole arm shaken in his enthusiasm. “I’m Mary. Obviously.”
He laughed like it was actually funny, and for a moment they both stood on either side of the threshold without moving. Mary was trying to remember the rules Geoff had insisted she recite by heart. Before it could become awkward, there was a jumble of footsteps down the stairs behind John and what had to be the youngest brother barrelled up behind his father. He was no longer the small child from Geoff’s photograph, already an inch taller than John and starting to widen in the shoulders, but his face matched the old man’s in his features and in his smile.
There was more hand-shaking and name-spouting and finally they were in the hall, Geoff and Hamish taking a bag each. John shut the cold outside. There were paper chains around the banister, in nine alternating shades of a colour wheel and cut into such even sizes that they might have been industrial. The air smelled of meat and tomatoes cooking in some far part of the house. Mary was led through a corridor into a roomy lounge with heavy curtains and a purring heater filling the now-decorative fireplace.
She saw first the man in the square, black chair. The whole room was centred on that chair, as if he had sat down a long time ago and the room had grown around him. There were grey ringlets arrayed artfully in his dark hair and his white hands skittered across the keyboard of the laptop that rested on his knees. He looked up at Mary for a few seconds and then returned his attention to the screen without missing a beat.
As Geoff had instructed, Mary looked away and didn’t greet him. She noticed the last person cross-legged on a beanbag in the corner. There was no doubt he was the infamous Murray, white-skinned, black-haired and thin as a toothpick in his wrists and the ankles above his bare feet. He was reading a thin hardcover and didn’t even dignify Mary with a glance.
“Sherlock,” John growled.
The laptop was snapped shut. Goeff’s father was on his feet in one swift movement and holding out both hands to grasp one of Mary’s. He positively towered, though she was not a short woman. His mouth smiled and his eyes narrowed. “Mary,” he said brightly. “It’s a pleasure.”
“Likewise,” she said, barely able to resist adding ‘sir’ on the end. She knew she was looking a bit stunned but she couldn’t seem to help it.
“Please, sit down,” one long hand was between her shoulder blades and guiding her to the rug-strewn sofa behind the door. “How was the train? Would you like a drink?”
“Good. Yes. Is it too early for wine?”
“Hamish,” Sherlock swept his hand in the direction of his youngest without looking. “Would you grab the Villa Maria in the fridge?”
Out of the corner of her eye, Mary was sure she saw John flash Sherlock a subtle thumbs up. She pretended to check her skirt so she could look down while she smiled. Geoff may have set rules for his partner, but evidently so had John.
“So,” Sherlock drew out the syllable as he settled back into his chair and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and fingertips pressed together. “Geoff didn’t say. What is it you do?”
“Uh, chemistry postdoc,” she sat on her hands to keep them from fiddling. “I’m working on solar power adaptors.”
“How delightful,” again that sharp smile, the narrowed eyes. Mary waited for him to speak again, but they both seemed to have reached the end of their scripts.
John cleared his throat and sat down on the arm of Sherlock’s chair, asking Mary how she got into chemistry. While she answered, she was keeping one ear on Geoff, who had strode in a straight line to the corner and was standing over Murray, one hand buried in his brother’s dark mat of hair. It didn’t curl the way Sherlock’s did, but looked like it was a long time since it had seen scissors or a comb.
While Mary talked about expeditions to Boston during her masters and cadium telluride substitutes, Murray was ducking his head away from Geoff’s hand and refusing to look away from his book.
“You’ve taken up the accordion again,” Murray said dryly, while Mary was trying to make a joke about her supervisor’s two-finger typing and John was giving an embarrassed laugh.
“You listened to the record?” Geoff asked.
“No,” Murray’s eyebrows lifted almost to his hairline. “Different calluses on the side of your thumb.”
“And you’re not on leave,” Geoff glanced him up and down. “So the navy thing didn’t work out, then?”
“That’s one way to put it,” Murray still hadn’t looked up from his book. “It’s not my fault they-“
John had evidently been listening as keenly as Mary, because he interrupted her and twisted his head in his sons’ direction, “Ah, Murray? Let’s not tell that one in front of guests.”
Murray closed his mouth, scowling. Hamish was suddenly by Mary’s elbow, offering a fistful of glasses from which she managed to extract one. He had a bottle of red wine under his other arm, held so precariously that she grabbed it from him before it fell. He grinned. “Pour as big a glass as you like.”
It sounded very tempting, but Geoff had warned her about Hamish, so she twisted off the cap and went with half a glass.
In the corner, Geoff still seemed determined to get something out of Murray. “I know your phone’s working.”
“Yes, no one else calls me from random Cambridge-area landlines to see if I’ll answer.”
“Aren’t you getting a bit old to play pretend?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Murray looked up at last, wrinkling his nose.
John tried to ask about where Mary grew up, though it was painfully clear that the attention of everyone in the room was on the two men in the corner even if no one was looking at them directly.
Geoff leaned down to pick at Murray’s collar, “You’ve lost almost eighteen pounds since last winter,” he said evasively.
“We-ell, yes,” Murray turned back to his book, his voice rising to a dry monotone. “Anorexia is no doubt one of the many delightful disorders the psychologists will consider,” when Geoff froze, halfway through pretending to pick a hair off Murray’s shoulder, he added. “Didn’t they say? Our fathers are thinking of having me institutionalised.”
A sucking silence. After a moment came the creak of a floorboard as Hamish straightened up and the rasp of Murray turning a page. Distantly, Mary wondered if she could hear the black tolling of a church bell.
John cleared his throat again. “Hamish, you wanna take Mary, show her the guest room? Please,” he added, with a croak at the end.
Hamish put the wine bottle down on the coffee table with a soft clink.
Upstairs, the youngest Holmes-Watson ushered her through the corridors like he was a tourist guide who’d done this a thousand times before, his voice expressive but his mind still downstairs with the rest of his family. “Bathroom,” he pointed. “Yours and Geoff’s. Murray and me - Murray and I,” he corrected himself, “we’ll use the downstairs one while you’re here. This is the spare room, used to be Dad and Daddy’s bedroom ‘til they moved down into the study,” he dumped the bags in the blandly decorated guestroom. Mary had barely noticed he’d carried them both up here under his long arms. Her mind was downstairs as well. “That’s my room. This is Geoff and Murray’s room. Used to be. Just Murray’s now, Geoff moved out when I was nine.”
He seemed to be reminding himself of that even though it had been years ago. He wandered across to Murray’s neatly made bed and sat on the edge, fingers knotted and pressed to his lips. Mary shifted a pile of science journals off a wicker chair by the window and sat down. For a while they both stayed silent, straining to listen, but there was only the wail of a far-off ambulance. Within a couple of minutes there were footsteps on the stairs and they looked up as Geoff pushed the door open.
“Is it true?” Hamish croaked.
“They were thinking about it. Thinking,” Geoff scowled. His voice was toneless, like Murray’s had been, like his father’s. He hadn’t lied. Mary could already see he was different around them. He paced the length of the room, glancing at Murray’s blank walls and jars of plants on the windowsill, analysing and collecting data. “They didn’t make any decisions,” he shook his head. “I bet they cleared the internet history. That would have tipped him off.”
“You won’t let them, though,” Hamish pulled his legs up onto the bed, resting his chin on his knees. “Geoff? You talked them out of it, didn’t you?”
“Tell me what happened,” Geoff demanded. “Tell me what’s brought this on.”
“What, like it’s not plain as day…”
“It isn’t to me,” Geoff snapped, gesturing around his head as if to swat away bothersome insects. “You’re all trying to fool each other, Dad’s the only one who isn’t reconstructing his surroundings to pretend things are okay. I don’t have enough information to make a deduction.”
Hamish squirmed, flopped backwards onto Murray’s bed, stretching his legs out. He spoke to the ceiling. “The navy thing - I don’t know all the details. No one tells me stuff. I figured out that it involved a stolen helicopter, one of Murray’s druggie girlfriends, and that Mycroft had to pull strings to get some charges dropped. They brought Murray home three months ago and he hasn’t left the house once that I’ve seen. Then last week he had an overdose.”
Geoff’s head snapped up. “What?”
“In this bedroom. I was at school, Dad was at the hospital. Murray didn’t mean to do it, I’m sure he didn’t. He tried to ring the landline before he passed out and Daddy found him with a note pinned to his shirt. He’d managed to write down the exact volume and composition of what he’d taken but I don’t think he knew what it would do until it was in his system,” Hamish covered his face with his hands.
“But he’s okay?”
“He was fine. He got to hospital, he’s fine, Geoff.”
“Where the hell did he get it? I thought he was clean, I thought that was all years ago…”
“We can’t watch him every second of the day,” Hamish raised his head, dropped it back onto the duvet.
“Hence professional help,” Geoff muttered. “Hence talk of institutions.”
For a minute there was a heavy silence, and then a soft knock on the door. John stuck his head inside. The cheer that he’d exuded earlier was gone but he still looked stoic. “Dinner’s pretty much ready guys,” he said, flashing Mary a pained smile.
Hamish and Geoff set the table. Christmas Eve dinner was casserole and boiled potatoes with lots of herbs. No one talked much, except John directing his sons to take this-or-that to the table or get salt and pepper out of the pantry. Everyone served themselves except Mary and Murray, who were each given a large plateful by John.
“Thanks,” Mary murmured.
John looked like he might be going to say something, perhaps apologise or try to explain, but Mary shook her head, don’t worry about it, and he went back to his seat.
Hamish managed to get the conversation going again by asking about the Anticlap. Geoff talked about aesthetic experiments and gig dates and the instinctual brilliance of their new producer.
“Will you go on tour with Geoff?” Hamish asked, turning to Mary suddenly.
Mary shook her head. “I can’t take the time off work. I’m sure we’ll manage.”
“Putting work first, very good idea,” Murray cut in. It was the first time he’d spoken during the meal and both his fathers gave him a warning glance. He skewered a tiny fragment of potato on the end of his fork. “I’m sure I don’t need to tell you, Mary, you should always put work first with this family. And whatever you do, don’t breed into it.”
“Murray,” John choked, putting his knife down with a clang. “Can you stop, please.”
“I’m giving her fair warning,” Murray replied lightly. “It was more than you got.”
Geoff stood up, shoving his chair back hard. Hamish, who was sitting beside Mary, seemed to shrink down under the table. In the split second before Geoff could say anything, an old-fashioned trill filled the air. Sherlock, who had been slicing up a piece of gravy-covered beef as if nothing untoward was happening, put down his utensils and reached into his pocket to withdraw a slim black mobile.
“Sherlock Holmes speaking.”
There was the buzz of someone at the other end.
“Can it wait until tomorrow? I’m in the middle of dinner.”
“It’s Christmas tomorrow,” John reminded him. Sherlock didn’t seem to hear him, because the next moment he spoke to the phone.
“I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
John gaped at him. “Sherlock!”
“The snow’s getting to the crime scene,” Sherlock said as if this was an excuse. He put the phone in his coat and stood smoothly, sweeping his coat off the back of the chair. “Do you want to come?”
“We’ve got guests to take care of!” John flapped his hand towards the room at large.
“Can I come?” asked Murray.
Sherlock turned in the doorway, wrapping a dark red scarf around his head. He made a disdainful face. “I would prefer you apologise to the rest of the table, but if you really find that so detestable then yes, you should probably come.”
Murray jumped to his feet and pushed past Geoff. John started to protest, but the two of them were already out the door. Hamish was almost under the table now. John had buried his face in his hands.
Geoff was still standing, but Mary had never seen such blankness on his face, twitching with something dark and indescribable underneath the surface. After a moment he stormed out.
“Geoff!” John yelled.
“I need to think!” Geoff bellowed back before the front door shut for the second time in as many minutes.
John pushed his chair back, grabbing for his own pale-brown jacket on a hook by the door, and then slinging Geoff’s coat over his arm too, “Oh, Christ,” he turned back to Mary. “I am so sorry. Finish eating and make yourself at home, um,” he pinched the bridge of his nose. “Hamish will show you where the kettle is. Um. I’ll be back. Again, I’m sorry.”
And then he, too, was gone. Hamish slowly sat up, staring at his plate of cooling food. He looked at Mary. “It usually turns out alright,” he tapped his fingers on the table. “Cup of tea?”
---
The terrace house that had been warm and welcoming before now seemed empty and lifeless. Mary sat in the guest room unpacking her and Geoff’s bags, though she wondered if there was much point. They’d meant to stay until New Years’ but now… well, she didn’t know. Was this ordinary for the Holmes-Watsons, was it really how Geoff thought families should behave? And could she bear to stay even if it was? She couldn’t stand her own family complications, let alone those belonging to other people.
She had texted Geoff’s mobile twice without answer, but this time she rung it and heard a faint buzzing. She followed it and found he’d left the damn thing in his bag. Mary sat on the carpet and rested her head against the smooth duvet. She couldn’t keep Murray’s words out of her head. Whatever you do, don’t breed into this family.
“Stop it,” she rubbed at her eye. “He’s just as much Geoff as he was yesterday.”
She pulled out a pile of student essays she’d brought to mark and started to go through them, but she couldn’t concentrate. Finally she decided to take a shower to clear her head. She changed into her dressing gown and wandered down the corridor with the towel John had laid out on the bed.
“Oh--”
“Oh, Jesus!”
Mary jumped backwards, covering her eyes before she realised Hamish was not indecent. He was, when she looked again, sitting on the bathroom window. His face was flushed pink, his knobbly knees were drawn up almost to his ears and there was a distinct smell of burning tobacco in the air.
Mary narrowed her eyes. She came into the bathroom, shut the door and cocked her head at Hamish. “Were you smoking?”
“I thought you were asleep,” he said, going pinker if that was possible.
“Did you drop the cigarette out the window?” Mary growled. “You could cause a fire!”
“I made sure it fell on the gravel,” Hamish leaned precariously out the window to check. “I will need to go get it, though. Daddy doesn’t miss these things.”
Mary sat herself on the edge of the bathtub with a sigh. “Your dad’s a doctor, Hamish. Why on earth are you smoking?”
Hamish gave an embarrassed chuckle. “Surely that’s obvious even to you. Everyone else in this family has problems, I’m just trying to get attention.”
She laughed into her hand. “Yes. I can see how that’d be difficult.”
“You have no idea,” Hamish leaned back against the window frame, staring out over the London rooftops. “I know what we’re like, but I hope you do stick with Geoff, start a family with him. I think it’ll be good to have a back-up in case this one implodes. Murray - he forgets that it’s Dad who keeps the rest of us sane. Stabilising effect and all. You could do the same.”
“Um,” she shrugged. “Thanks.”
Mary didn’t know what to say. John seemed to do alright, didn’t he? He’d stuck with Geoff’s father for more than twenty-seven years. How did he do it? What was she not seeing? What had John experienced, out in the world, that made this family preferable? She resolved that she would ask him, before she let things go further with Geoff. She would ask John to talk about Sherlock, not specifics, just get him talking. And then she would, as Geoff always said, make a deduction - whether it was worth it or not. Whether it was love keeping John here or fear of loneliness and unfamiliarity. Whether John regretted any of it. Mary had always avoided domestic conflict, but this one was also new to her, and she was curious by nature. She wanted to know the truth before she bolted.
After a few moments of silence, Murray twisted his head around and jumped down onto the tiled floor. “I should let you take that shower. Sorry about the ciggy smell.”
Mary didn’t see him again that night. She fell asleep in the guest room with essays spilling out of her hands, and woke to voices in the hall outside. She waited for her eyes to adjust in the darkness. The lamp by the side of the bed was off, the papers stacked neatly on the floor with her red pen resting on top. Geoff must have found her snoring and tucked her in. She pushed back the covers and padded to the door, which was open the tiniest crack, a line of light so thin it might have been drawn with a ballpoint.
She recognised Geoff’s voice, though Murray’s was so similar she almost couldn’t separate them. They were whispering, clear and cutting through the silent house.
“Daddy solved the case, then?”
Murray snorted. “Yes. Trivial. A typical domestic with a moderately clever cover-up.”
“Did you help?”
“Obviously.”
“It’s sad,” Geoff said, blank and cold. “You’re trying to be just like him, but it’s like a joke. Like you’re a caricature. Why can’t you just be your own person?”
“Oh, that’s hypocrisy for you!” Murray snarled back. “Look at you, pretending to be ordinary, playing house like a sitcom boyfriend! At least I don’t spend all day looking down at people, faking idiocy, faking love-“
“I do love Mary.”
“No, you just don’t find her quite as dull as you find everyone else.”
“You think that’s what our father thinks of Dad? Do you really believe that? That’s ridiculous. Have never in your entire life actually liked anyone, Murray?”
“I liked you,” Murray cried, raising his voice above a whisper. “I liked you. But you ran away.”
Geoff didn’t reply. Mary wished she could see through the solid wood of the door, see what Geoff’s face was saying, see whether he was hugging Murray or balling his fists. But she couldn’t, so she crossed the unfamiliar room and slid back into bed. Geoff came in soon enough, and she stayed still as if she was asleep, miserably aware that he must know she was faking it. He knew everything, didn’t he? That’s what this family of geniuses was like.
Geoff curled up against her. “We’ll go home tomorrow,” he whispered. “I’m sorry. I should have known it would be like this.”
“I can go home if you want to stay and sort it out,” she rolled over a little. “I don’t mind Christmas alone, that’s normal fare for me.”
He didn’t answer.
---
Mary expected the brothers to avoid each other the next morning, but they all rose at the same time like clockwork. John was already up and making enough toast, eggs and tea to feed an army, and they all settled in the lounge with plates on their knees. Geoff and Murray weren’t talking to each other, but Hamish and John kept up the conversation without a pause and Mary joined in as best she could. The snow had stopped during the night and outside the white frosting glistened, too early to be marred by tyre tracks and the over flow from gutters.
Sherlock drifted in eventually, the tails of his blue silk gown trailing after him. He draped himself over his chair with his hands forming a steeple against his lips. John got up and leaned over him, hands propped on the arms of the chair. “Are you hungry?”
“Hmm?” Sherlock didn’t seem to be properly awake yet. “No.”
In another part of the house, a landline rung and Mary jumped like it was an emergency siren. John grumbled and wandered off to answer it.
“You better book your tickets soon, Geoff,” Murray said. “If you’re going to get back to Cambridge today.”
“Got stick your head in a bucket of ice,” Geoff snapped back.
“Boys,” Sherlock drawled.
Mary looked up as John arrived in the doorway, the cordless hanging from one hand. There were new lines around his mouth that hadn’t been there a moment ago. Before she could ask what was wrong, Murray and Geoff were at it again.
Geoff started it this time, “I don’t see why it’s so much more exhausting to fake being a git than to fake being half decent.”
“Being a git’s in my blood.”
“Last I checked, you’re only half consulting detective.”
Sherlock clicked his fingers, “This is a completely pointless discussion which you will both stop immediately.”
Murray snorted, “That’s the only way to communicate with Geoff these days, by being pointless decoration.”
“Don’t you dare bring Mary into this again-“
“You thought I was talking about Mary? Maybe I meant your music. Though clearly if that’s what you think of Mary-“
“I swear, Murray, I will-“
“Oh stop it, all of you!” Hamish cried, leaping to his feet. There was a sob in his voice. He was staring at John. “Mrs Hudson has died.”
All eyes turned to John, even Sherlock, who sat up so quickly he almost slid off his chair.
“No other reason for someone to call the house at Christmas with bad news, and Harry and Mycroft are both healthy,” Sherlock said quietly, apparently used to explaining his deductions aloud.
John nodded silently. Hamish crossed the room in three steps and threw his arms around his neck. His dad rubbed his back in slow circles.
“How?” Geoff demanded. “She’s still fit as an ox!”
“She has an emergency beeper,” Murray added. “I check the batteries every time I see her.”
“They think it was a stroke,” John shrugged, “Her beeper was activated but it happened too fast. Hamish, let’s go sit on the couch, my knees are about to crumple.”
Half carrying his youngest, John manoeuvred them across the room and collapsed onto the sofa with Hamish still clinging to him.
“We were going to go see her this afternoon,” Sherlock whispered, staring at the heater in the defunct fireplace.
“W-we should have b-been taking care of her!” Hamish sobbed into John’s neck.
“Hey, hey,” John wriggled into a more comfortable position. “It’s not anyone’s fault.”
“B-but we might have spotted early symptoms,” Hamish curled up in John’s arms, like an enormous leggy insect, still hiding his face. “We might have saved her.”’
John ran his hands through his youngest’s hair, murmuring, “She liked living on her own, Hamish, she didn’t want anyone telling her what to do.”
“Why did they call here?” Sherlock asked, after almost a minute of silence had been broken only by Hamish’s fading sniffles.
John smiled sadly. “No next of kin. Just us.”
“They’ll want us to help clear her place,” Geoff mumbled. “There’ll be things to sort out,” he looked at Mary. “I’ll have to stay in London a few more days.”
“Of course we will,” Mary said with hesitation, grasping his hand. She didn’t know who ‘Mrs Hudson’ was but her importance was clear even to someone who wasn’t a super-genius.
For a few minutes there was silence. Hamish wouldn’t let John go, and his dad spoke at last. “Cheer up, kiddo.”
“Why?” Hamish’s voice was muffled, his face still hidden. “No one even wants to be here. What’s the point?”
“I’ll tell you a story. A nice story,” John offered plaintively. He twisted to look at Sherlock with a wince, and mouthed, what do I say?
Sherlock took up the reigns. “How much do you know about when I went away, Hamish? Before you were born?”
“Hang on, that’s not a nice story,” John frowned.
But the teenager raised his head, wiping his nose on the back of his hand. “Not much. None of you talk about it.”
“Not a nice story at all,” John repeated.
“Well, it’s got a happy ending,” Sherlock raised his eyebrows. “Though it doesn’t start well from my perspective.”
“He didn’t ‘go away’,” Murray supplied. “He jumped off a building.”
Geoff propped his chin on his hand and explained to Mary. “He killed himself right in front of Dad. Faked his own suicide, to protect a bunch of people from this bastard who wanted to kill them. It’s rather complicated. I was ten, Murray was eight.”
Mary put her hand over her mouth. “You didn’t see it…?”
“No, we were at the police station,” Geoff glancing at the ceiling, recalling the day in his mind. “We’d woken up the night before to find Dad and Daddy had run away from the police.”
“Sherlock’s idea,” John cut in.
“I was buying us time to stop Moriarty,” Sherlock countered defensively.
“Anyway, DI Lestrade wanted to keep an eye on us so he took us to the police station because he knew our fathers would turn themselves in sooner or later,” Murray explained.
“But Daddy knew Moriarty would kill everyone if he didn’t jump off the roof of the hospital,” Geoff said quietly.
“Not us,” Murray corrected. “He wasn’t going to kill us.”
“No, he wasn’t,” Sherlock said bitterly, his brow twisting. “He thought you two would be too interesting, once you’d grown up.”
“I’d kill him twice if I could,” John muttered. “I’d kill him three times. I had to go to my sons and tell them… tell that what had happened.”
“But Daddy wasn’t really dead?” Hamish prompted. “He came back, right?”
“Not for a long time,” John whispered into his hair, clutching Hamish tight. “He had to make sure Moriarty’s men weren’t waiting for him.”
“We didn’t think he was dead,” Murray said scornfully.
Geoff nodded. “We knew he’d faked it. We made Mycroft give us the CCTV footage from the nearest camera. Daddy had picked a black spot in the network.”
“I stole all the photographs from the evidence files at the police station,” Murray said proudly.
“I got the autopsy report. Clearly fake,” Geoff added. “I confronted Molly Hooper, too. Clearly lying.”
“And the paramedics who took the body didn’t exist,” Murray said. “I stuck my thumb in my mouth, widened my eyes and walked all around the hospital asking for the men who’d taken my daddy away. The doctors looked everywhere for them but nobody on staff had been at the scene.”
John shook his head. “You two… Christ. You have no idea how difficult you were. I just wanted you to move on, I just wanted you to grieve, and I’d walk in to find you staring at pictures of your father’s dead body… God, you worried me…”
“My sons,” Sherlock said proudly, winking at Mary.
“What happened then?” Hamish insisted, sitting up a little.
“No one would believe us,” Geoff sighed. He shifted to the edge of his seat. Murray got up, dragged the beanbag over and sat it next to Geoff so they could both talk to Hamish at once. Geoff spread his arms, “We knew we were right, but no one would take us seriously, and we were never sure if Mycroft was in on it or not. But finally Dad played along. When we couldn’t sleep he’d sit up and tell us stories about what Daddy was doing, how he was in Tibet or Argentina, how he was fighting all the branches of Moriarty’s network…”
“He stole most of the stories from Tintin,” Murray winced.
“Only a couple!” John protested.
“And all the while, little Hamish was getting bigger and bigger inside him,” Geoff leaned forward.
“What, really?” Hamish straightened up and turned to look at Sherlock. “Did you know?” he demanded.
Sherlock shook his head.
“We knew we had to tell him,” Murray wriggled until he was cross-legged on the beanbag, shoulder almost brushing Geoff’s as he gesticulated. “We were sure if he knew about Hamish he’d come back.”
“So we tried to contact all the people who owed him anything, asking them to find him and give him the message,” Geoff scratched his head. “In hindsight, it was a bit dangerous.”
“-A bit!” John spluttered.
“Irene Adler. Shinwell Johnson. Major Barrymore. I have no doubt that your youth and innocuous appearance was the only thing that kept you out of serious trouble,” Sherlock shook his head.
“Which was all for nothing,” John grouched. “Sherlock figured it out from the way I was writing in my blog, though he got the date a bit late.”
“You were you all on your own?” Hamish asked, staring at John as if seeing something in his face that had hitherto been invisible. “When you had me?”
John nodded, looking at an empty part of the wallpaper across the room. “All on my own, little man. It was funny, a part of me didn’t believe you were real, even though they’d checked you on ultrasound and all that. It was like Geoff and Murray had created a make-believe Sherlock to keep me sane, but the make-believe had bled into you as well… I felt like you were a promise I knew was going to be broken, that when it was time for your arrival you’d just slip through my fingers and I’d wake up into a world where the last trace of Sherlock was gone,” he shook his head.
Geoff and Murray were watching his face. Sherlock was looking at John’s hands. John raised one and scrubbed his palm over his cheek. “Even when I realised I needed to go to the hospital… I dropped Geoff and Murray off at Harry’s, and then I ended up at a park, just sitting on the grass watching an under fifteen footy game, Totteridge versus Belmont, I remember it. I didn’t want that game to end even though I was starting to hurt pretty damn sharply. Some part of me was so sure that when it ended both Sherlock and the little man inside me would be gone, it would truly be over. I couldn’t even stand up afterwards. Two of the mums found me and drove me to the ED. It could have ended really badly but it was alright. You were screaming just like your brothers had when they brought you over to show me,” he tightened his arm around Hamish’s waist. “You weren’t a dream. Sherlock was still gone but you were real, and that was all that mattered.”
He fell silent. No one picked up the story - none of them knew it like John did. He shook his head. “I was just so tired after that, I don’t remember much for a while.”
“So then you came back,” Hamish frowned at his father.
Sherlock nodded. “I thought it was safe by then. I came back as soon as I could.”
John smiled and squeezed Hamish’s shoulder. The warmth was back in his face. “I was out of hospital and taking you for your first walk around the block. I was all worried because you didn’t cry as much as these two blighters,” he jabbed his thumb at Geoff and Murray. “And then I came around the corner and there he was, your daddy. Like he’d never left. He had to take you out of my arms because I thought I was going to fall over, and then of course I couldn’t punch the sod for leaving because you can’t punch a man holding a baby. I’ll never forget the look on his face,” he stared at Sherlock, as if he still couldn’t believe the man in front of him was alive. “And he was real and you were real and I finally realised it wasn’t a dream after all. Thing was, the boys and their mad stories had primed me to be ready, in a way. Sherlock coming back felt like the only fair outcome. I don’t know how I would have survived the shock otherwise,” he shook his head. “You all saved me, in so many different ways.”
Mary watched them as they became quiet, looking at each other with expressions that were impossible to interpret. The strangest and most impossible family in existence. She didn’t need to talk to John after all, she’d made her deduction. It was obvious even when you weren’t a genius.
Murray rubbed his eyes. “We should open presents. I’ve got one for you and Mary, Geoff. I’ll go find it.”
---
One Year Later
There was a last-minute committee Mary had to attend, for one of the PhD students she co-supervised. Geoff had taken the train down to London early, and now she had to find her way to the strange address all on her own. There was no snow this year, but there were still children out with their exhausted parents bundled up tight and breathing fog. The trees were lit with coloured bulbs and cloth banners with cheery angels flapped from the streetlamps. She sighed with relief when the sign ‘Baker St’ finally appeared in the distance, tightening her scarf and pulling her hat lower over her ears. This was it.
It looked a lot smaller than the brick place on a corner where they had spent the last Christmas. It turned out that in her will, Mrs Hudson had left her whole house to John and Sherlock, and they had decided to move into the top two floors where Geoff and Murray had been raised (they were still deciding whether to rent out the other two flats or not). It was going to be a bit of a squash, Geoff had said; only Hamish and their fathers lived in the two-bedroom apartment now, so Mary and Geoff would sleep on the fold-out couch and Murray had his own flat to go back to across town. The brick house where Geoff had spent his teenage years was currently on the market.
“Murray’s joined the police force,” he had reported a few months earlier, complete shock on his face as he put down the phone after a conversation with John.
“How long do you think that will last?” Mary asked.
“I have no data for this scenario,” Geoff sounded dizzy. “I don’t know.”
But the middle Watson-Holmes son hadn’t been kicked out so far. Everyone was keeping their fingers crossed.
Mary raised her hand to rap on the door below the digits 221B, before she noticed a folded piece of paper under the knocker. She pulled it out and opened it. Key under mat.
Rolling her eyes, she crouched down and fumbled for the key through her thick woollen gloves. The lock turned smoothly and she headed through the hall. Someone above was playing a violin. “Geoff?” she called, and the music stopped.
The stairway was worn and splintery, the wallpaper faded and scarred. She took off her hat as she pushed open the door at the top and stuck her head inside. Not Geoff, but Sherlock, stood in front of her. He raised his bow to continue the music at a softer tone as he acknowledged her with a nod that didn’t break his rhythm, then turned back to the window, fingers flying across the strings. The flat was tiny compared to their previous home, the pattern on the walls grim and the doorways scarred with years of use. Cramped shelves lined the walls from skirting boards to ceiling, while papers, books and bits of Hamish’s school uniform covered every available surface. There were boxes still unpacked under the only table and equations scrawled in red marker on the window. It seemed like a strange place for them to retire to, though it must have been even stranger to be born and raised here.
“Hello, Mary,” John appeared in a double doorway that lead to a cramped kitchen. He was in a striped yellow apron and held up his hands to show they were covered with flour, but pecked her on the cheek when she leaned in to give him a perfunctory hug anyway. “The boys all went down for a last-minute supermarket run, they should be back soon. Your meeting go well?”
“As well as it could have,” Mary unwound her scarf and hung up her coat and the rest of her warm clothes. She stood on the threshold between the two rooms, watching Sherlock’s melody crescendo and fade from a final sharp note. He turned towards Mary and his gaze flicked across her hands and face.
“I see you’re keeping a secret from Geoff,” he said.
“Oh, Christ, don’t you dare,” she twisted her hands together.
The corner of his mouth twitched in a smile. “I won’t tell. Got a ring?”
“I thought I’d just ask him straight out,” Mary chewed on the inside of her cheek. “He doesn’t wear jewellery anyway.”
“Ask what?” John appeared behind her.
“Never mind, John, you’ll find out later,” Sherlock said quickly, raising the violin again.
“Oh fine, yes, I’ll just go back to kitchen,” John threw up his hands and ambled over to the bench where he was rolling up meatballs. “No need to keep me in the loop,” he called.
Sherlock smiled and glanced at Mary once more before he rested the bow over the strings. A slight frown tightened between his eyes. “Two secrets.”
“Sorry?”
“You don’t know?” Sherlock drew his head back. “Oh, well.”
“Know what?”
“Nothing.”
Sherlock was playing again, chinrest tucked tight up against his neck. Mary took a couple of steps towards him. “Know what?” she repeated.
John, stripped of the apron, came up beside her and handed her a glass of merlot. “Here we are. What’s he said that’s got you flustered?”
“He’s not telling me something,” Mary said, wrapping the fingers around the glass. “One of his deductions.”
“Ah, well, I can deal with that,” John slipped up close to Sherlock and curled one arm around his neck, getting in the way of his bow-arm. “Tell her.”
“It’s not my place,” Sherlock grumbled, forced to abort his playing while John was tangling him up.
“Tell her, or else,” John leaned in to kiss him. Mary sipped at her wine and looked away; watching other people kiss always made her uncomfortable, let alone when they were her in-laws. Would be her in-laws. If Geoff said yes. Why wouldn’t he say yes? Oh God, he probably already knew, just like his father. What was she getting herself into?
All those concerns went out the window (and the wine in her mouth was spat back into the glass) when Sherlock said with a broad grin at John, “We’re going to be grandparents.”