Y/N is first to wake that morning, fresh, clean daylight leaking through the curtains lighting the backs of her eyelids up pink.
Warmed by the insistent dawn sun, Sherlock had kicked off some of the covers at some point, his lean frame taking up most of the bed.
Y/N had fallen asleep with him holding her close, and he seemed to have kept his word, even when unconscious;
He's still loosely curled around her, one of his arms draped protectively over her middle as if sleepily poised---ready to draw her closer at the snap of a twig or footsteps on the landing. Despite this, his expression is soft when asleep, his t-shirt is rucked up, exposing a slither of his alabaster stomach, dark curls ruffled messily about his head on the pillow.
The bed is so close to the window that the carefully stitched hem of the curtains cloaks the bedframe.
Gently wriggling from the weight of Sherlock's arm, Y/N tugs them open and folds her arms on the sill.
The garden is already awake, each leaf, flower petal and blade of grass turned to bask in the buttery sunlight. Several rabbits nibble the lawn, the fur of their flanks prickly with moisture. They scatter when a door opens downstairs and Mrs Holmes pads through the wet grass to refill a bird table with sunflower seeds. The robins aren't afraid of her and flutter impatiently about her feet, but the bluetits and sparrows are a little timider and eye her cautiously from the safety of the hedgerows.
Relishing the morning sun on her cheeks, Y/N lets her eyes close, the scent of the lavender flowers tickling the inside of her nose.
...
When Sherlock wakes, they don't talk about the fox and the cuddling.
They don't explicitly decide not to, it just doesn't happen.
Sherlock had stirred and turned onto his side. Finding Y/N awake, his face slowly brightens with a sleepy, lopsided grin. "Good morning."
Y/N smiles teasingly. "It's nearly noon."
"How did you sleep?"
"Very well, thank you. You?"
"Better than I have in a long time."
Both blushing slightly awkwardly, Y/N turns back to the open window.
Every time a bird tries to approach the table, one particularly fat robin chases them away, flying at them in a screeching ball of brown and red fury.
Mrs Holmes keeps flapping at it with her teatowel, chastising it as though it were a greedy, petulant child but, unperturbed, it continues pecking through the seeds until Mrs Holmes whines for her husband.
"What is going on out there?" Sherlock asks, pushing himself up to kneel next to Y/N and peer through squinted lids into the sun. He folds his arms on the window sill, the window's recess too narrow for him to do so without his shoulders pressing up against Y/N's.
The back of Y/N's neck heats below her pyjamas but she's soon distracted as Mr Holmes appears from the back of the house, followed by six white runner ducks.
In a pair of comically long Wellington boots, he waddles over to his wife, a straw-matted garden spade in hand like a confused farmer about to go to war. "What appears to be the problem, my dear?"
"It's that dammed bird again, Charles!" Wendy cries, and Y/N feels Sherlock giggle next to her, her own lips pressed together to repress a smile.
"Well, what do you want me to do about it, woman? Bash him?" Mr Holmes brandishes his spade threateningly at the quaint little painted bird table, and his ducks all begin quacking uncertainly, flapping around on their big orange feet.
Mrs Holmes stops worrying about the fat robin for a moment, properly noticing the ducks departing in all directions like confused, brain-dead sheep. As though they're dinner guests she knows she hadn't forwarded an invitation to, she points to them, her eyes narrowing. "Charles, what are they doing here?"
Leaning on his spade, her husband shrugs. "I always let them out in the morning."
"Not any more you don't! Remember my begonias? I've told you a million times they're not allowed out!"
One of the ducks is midway through choking on an iris.
"Well, they're already out now, aren't they?"
"Then put them back in!"
...
By the time Y/N and Sherlock are dressed and pad downstairs, they're still chuckling about the ducks and Mr Holmes and the fat robin.
"If I had ducks," Sherlock asks suddenly, pulling on a jumper, "would you let them run all over the garden?"
"Sherlock," Y/N giggles, "if you had ducks they could go wherever they wanted."
Smiling, pleased, Sherlock holds the kitchen door open for Y/N to pass through, a lingering smell of toast greeting them.
A surprisingly snug little stone-walled room protruding from the main house, a mixture of new and old gadgets for whisking, mixing, boiling and baking squash onto oak counters and snug shelves. A bright yellow Smeg fridge takes up most of the room, alongside a rotund gas hob and a deep farmhouse sink piled with egg-stained plates, and a round breakfast table.
The flagstone floor is cool under Y/N's feet, apart from in one section where it has been pleasantly warmed by a square block of sunlight falling from the open doorway. Propped open by a sack of potatoes, it leads out to a small circular patio sunk into the front garden where Mrs Holmes---after losing her battle with the fat robin---is bending over one of the numerous flowerpots.
Returning to the kitchen, she smiles, reaching up on tiptoes to give Sherlock a kiss on the cheek as he fetches the milk, and stooping to kiss Y/N as she pours cereal at the table. Her flowery dress smells of fresh herbs; sprigs of thyme, parsley and rosemary. "You two are up late, you missed a fried breakfast."
Other bunches of herbs hang from the ceiling to dry, and, getting up carefully onto a footstool, she adds the new sprigs, saying affectionately as she does so:
"I used to call Sherlock my little owl; he'd always be awake til two, then sleep in till noon."
"I assume Mycroft has been up since five." Sherlock sneers with distaste, loading some toast with an ungodly amount of strawberry jam.
It's homemade, Mrs Holmes had told Y/N proudly at dinner yesterday, the lid sealed with a rubber band and a checked swatch of cloth.
She gives Sherlock a warning glare but fetches two cups and a pitcher of orange juice from the fridge all the same and sets it on the table. "Yes, he's gone back to London but he'll be back this evening. You know how he is with work."
Y/N takes her pick from the choice of toast and spreads, and looks around, realising something is missing:
There are no hands scrabbling to snatch it off her, no elbows bumping her side, no gunshots going off. She can actually hear the birdsong outside, the table spacious enough for her and Sherlock to have separate ends each.
He'd sat next to her anyway.
"Where is everyone?"
A copper kettle begins whistling, rattling excitedly on the hob and Mrs Holmes bustles over quickly to take it off the heat. "They went for a shoot, dear."
Sherlock catches Y/N's alarmed expression. "They don't actually shoot anything anymore. They just bring binoculars and stare at it."
"Like bird watching?"
Pouring her some orange juice. "Yes, but if you call it that they might very well shoot you."
Y/N laughs but makes a mental note not to mention bird-watching all the same. "Is Charles still with his ducks?"
"Since six this morning," Mrs Holmes sighs. "The only good thing is they lay nice big eggs. I do get lonely though when he's doing his projects."
"You should get a dog, Mum," Sherlock suggests reflexively, snatching the opportunity to wedge the idea into a conversation.
Wendy shakes her head. "You know I wouldn't be able to walk him with my knees."
"Get a dog with little legs," Y/N pipes up helpfully, and Sherlock lights up, pleasantly surprised.
"If you had a dog I'd visit a lot more."
"Well, when you inherit the house you can fill it with as many dogs as you like," His mother says firmly, putting a jar of marmalade on the table with a little more force than necessary.
Y/N elbows him for being tactless, but Mrs Holmes---apparently used to such things---has already tossed the matter aside. "Sherlock, dear, would you mind chopping some firewood? I would ask your father but his back's playing up again."
He rolls his eyes, having already pounced on the marmalade. He's just eating it with a butter knife, scooping it around the pot like a spoon. "Can't you buy some in?"
"And get the poor delivery man to come all the way out here?"
"That's what he's paid to do."
"Yes, but I wouldn't have to pay you anything."
...
While Sherlock ties the laces of his walking boots, Mrs Holmes puts the plug in the sink, up to her elbow in dirty dishes.
Y/N comes over to her as the back door closes and takes the tea towel off of her arm.
She smiles gratefully, squirting some Fairy Liquid into the stream of tap water. "That's very sweet of you dear, but you don't have to---"
Y/N smiles. "I want to."
The window above the sink looks out at over back garden, which is smaller than the front, and more shaded, the woods having crept so close to the cottage there's only a thin, patchy smattering of lawn.
Despite its challenging limitations, Mr and Mrs Holmes have planted several shrubs and beds of hardy flowers, although they do appear slightly nibbled, probably by Mr Holme's ducks. Mainly, though, the garden is occupied by knobbly tree trunks and prickly blackberry bushes, the floor spongy and soft with fallen leaves.
From the window, Y/N can just about see the back of the duck's little wooden house, painted blue and squished between two potting sheds. Next to those, a decrepit wood shed is stacked with lumps of un-chopped timber, the roof caving in so much Y/N is surprised---as her flatmate approaches---that he can tell what is to be tossed in the fire and what is part of the building keeping the rain off.
Y/N can not imagine Sherlock chopping wood, she contemplates as she watches him choose which piece to hack in half first.
His hands are all delicate fingers, and those are all delicate bones---with enough dexterity for violin and finesse for microscopes and Petri dishes---so she blinks in surprise when he takes the axe, worn to shape by many hands, and his fingers fit easily into the grooves. Comfortably, he raises it and swings it down in a smooth, powerful stroke.
The stump splits with a crack that can be heard through the window panes.
The cloth in Y/N's hands has wiped the same plate so many times it's bone dry, and she vaguely feels Mrs Holmes take it from her and put it away in a cupboard.
Distractedly, Y/N realises Mrs Holmes is saying something.
"When he was a boy and had a difficult day at school, or he'd get lost in his own head, or frustrated about one thing or another I'd send him out there chopping wood and he'd come in feeling much better."
Y/N blinks, a smile twitches her lip. "I do the same thing!"
Mrs Holmes turns to her, surprised.
Y/N continues:
"When he's getting sort of...untethered, I make him come on a walk with me. I think it helps ground him...or something."
Beaming, Mrs Holmes nods, turning back to scrub a particularly tough bacon stain from a chicken-patterned plate. "Mycroft always had a problem with that---he'd get all tangled up in his own thoughts. You couldn't get him outdoors if you tried, though, so I'd get him to help me cook; kneading dough and things."
"He's very good at it," Y/N says and Wendy preens proudly.
They watch her son in the back garden, silently, going back and forth between the woodshed and the chopping block. Every time he takes care to step around a little thicket of grape hyacinth that has managed to grow in the shade of the trees.
"He really wants me to get a dog," She sighs after a little while, the stubborn disinterest she seemed to have for the idea replaced with a forlorn sort of sadness. "He can't have one in his flat, obviously, so he keeps bugging me to get one," she continues, and Y/N hurries herself along, trying to keep pace with the growing stack of crockery on the drying rack. "But I really can't walk that far, and Charles has his ducks. I don't know why he moved into that big city; I always knew Mycroft would because he likes that sort of thing---offices and schedules---but Sherlock?"
Y/N's hands move absently around the base of a rusty saucepan. "...I can't really imagine him not living in London."
She really can't. Or at least she couldn't, before. She pictures him as an integral part of the city, his neat dress jackets and black Oxfords slotting into the scene as though he's part of the backdrop.
But Mrs Holmes is shaking her head. "He always hated the city; I used to take him into town as a child to get new shoes and clothes." She starts counting on her fingers:
"He'd get upset because it was too crowded, then cry because it was too loud. He was scared of the underground, the lights. He'd get all---"
"Sensory overloaded?" Y/N puts forward, and Mrs Holmes nods. "I'm the same, of course. And my husband. Mycroft doesn't seem to mind so much, but then again he does have his big, quiet house to come home to."
Y/N ponders this. She hadn't been able to look away from Sherlock the entire time, this man she thought she knew currently slicing firewood in muddy boots and a wool jacket.
His curls sticking slightly to his forehead from the work, he pins the axe in the chopping block and lifts off his jumper, the muscles in his arms shifting as he ties the sleeves about his waist.
Y/N's gaze retreats down to the towel in her hand, pretending to concentrate on drying every crevice of a cheese grater.
If Wendy noticed, she doesn't say anything.
"What did you think Sherlock would do if he didn't move to the city?"
Sherlock had resumed his rhythmic chopping, and Mrs Holmes watches her son critically as if mentally placing him in different job settings before deciding he doesn't fit and moving him to the next.
She eventually shrugs her round shoulders. "Well, all he ever wanted to be was a pirate, so who's to say. Although, I did always think he might go into entomology---you know---the study of insects?" She explains and Y/N nods.
There's books back at 221B on the living room shelves with that word printed on their spines, the walls of their flat decorated with butterflies and beetles encased in glass frames.
"He's always been obsessed with his microscope; he'd be out there catching bees in jars and sketching them, writing things down. He got his detective skills from tracking animals, you know?"
Y/N smiles, imagining her flatmate dedicating his life to following bumble bees around a grassy meadow and scribbling their habits down in a leather notebook.
"I worry about him in London. It's not good for someone like him, being around all that noise. And he's so shy around people."
'Shy' is not the word Y/N would use, but she understands what Mrs Holmes means.
He is perfectly relaxed around his flatmate and Mrs Hudson, but as soon as he walks out the front door into the bustling world it immediately becomes apparent that he's a little bit different.
Mrs Holmes seems to have aged a few years before Y/N's eyes, the smile wrinkles by her eyes deepening into worry lines. "I don't care how many criminals he's caught, I still see him as the little boy in wellies too big for him trailing around the fens looking for frogspawn."
Y/N frowns.
Sometimes, while Donovan or an ignorant stranger berates him for his...Sherlock-isms, before he can pull on his mask of indifferent nonchalance, Y/N catches his face fall. In that moment she sees him not as the capable detective with the stoney expression they see, but as her sleepy best friend dozing in his armchair the night before, or perched on the counter nibbling Jammy Dodgers open to bite out the jelly centre.
Comfortingly, Y/N places a hand on the back of Mrs Holmes washing up gloved palm, dotted with fairy liquid bubbles. "London is busy, but I think he's happy there. There's lots of work to keep him occupied, I think that's why he moved."
"But is there too much work? He's always solving other people's problems, carrying their baggage. How does he have enough strength to carry his own?"
"He's not carrying it alone." Y/N gives her an encouraging smile. "He's got us."
The washing done, Mrs Holmes pulls the plug, letting the soapy water drain away. "Thank you, dear. I know I'm being silly but a mother worries." She chuckles at herself, but there is a real sadness in the sound. She smiles. "I'm so glad he has you. I've never seen him this way around anyone before."
Y/N opens her mouth to ask what she means, but the back door opens, Sherlock's heavy boots sounding on the flagstones.
"I filled the woodshed, there should be enough for a few days," he says, taking a seat on the step to untangle his laces.
Mrs Holmes is right; chopping wood has made his shoulders looser and his cheeks a healthy, rosy pink.
His eyes are bright as he quips:
"I don't know why you're still lighting fires anyway; it's pique summer."