Sherlock X Reader One Shots || 𝐹𝐿𝑈𝐹𝐹 + 𝑆𝑀𝑈𝑇

A Holmes Family Reunion (Part 1)

Plot summary:

Sherlock invites (his friend/flatmate ) Y/N to one of The Holme's family reunions where they both realise what they actually want out of life.

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Authors note: 

Hey, another establishing relationship fic, I know. I did try to write this with them already having been dating for a while, but it just lacked the spice and the tension---

I have not seen season 4 but I was delighted to hear Sherlock is a country lad who grew up in the British countryside like myself, but LESS pleased to hear the Holmes family house burnt down in a fire?? I am not a fan of tragedy so I say screw that. This is what I imagine Sherlock's family home to be like. *Hurls cottage core at you*

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Initially, Y/N had been confused when Sherlock had pulled up outside 221B in the rental car he'd selected to drive them to his childhood home---

---but, after fifteen minutes roaming the British countryside, she now thinks the sturdy, tank-like Land Rover makes perfect sense.

Y/N does not know exactly where they are going.

Sherlock had told her, but it had sounded more like something out of a Beatrix Potter book than a real place. It had a name so English Y/N could taste tea and Custard Creams on her tongue as she'd heard it.

Holliegate Loke?

Setterfield Barn?

Willow Cottage?

Something like that. She doesn't even know if they're nearly there because he hasn't entered it into the SAT-NAV.

Sherlock doesn't make the several-hour trip home often but he seems to know the way instinctually; like a bird returning to its nest site. From Baker Street, he had gravitated instantly to the dual carriageway and ridden it for several hours until it just sort of...ran out.

London reduced to nothing but a grey smear on their memories, Sherlock had then taken them through several quaint little towns which turned into cobble-stoned villages, which then turned into rolling hills and country roads smattered with clods of mud from tractor tires.

Woodlands creep onto the cracking pavement, trees reaching their branches over like wedding arches, and several times they'd had to ford a small flood, climb out of a pothole and---on one occasion---wait for a heard of several hundred sheep to filter over the road into a daisy-flecked field.

Their borrowed Land Rover took all this in its stride, dodging them around pheasants, dog walkers, and wading through long-neglected potholes, the paintwork now freckled with spatterings of healthy countryside mud.

They had passed the time with word games, easy conversation and an audiobook of Diane Setterfiled's new book: Once Upon A River---

---but, upon passing through the first village they've come across for over half an hour, Sherlock had switched it off and started pointing things out from the window.

Y/N watches as a limestone building shaped like a miniature cathedral passes on their right, to which Sherlock mutters with evident disgust:

"I was homeschooled but I did my GCSEs there."