"You and Mycroft are so..." John gesticulated and then closed his eyes trying to find the right word "...well, posh." That came out wrong, John thought. "And what about the driver?" He said seizing tangible evidence for his assumptions.
"He was one of Mycroft's lot."
John flushed. He was bemusedly trying to picture Sherlock and Mycroft popping in and out of this idiosyncratic, little house.
"What do you parents do?" John realised he'd been assuming they were landed gentry. He desperately tried to readjust to Sherlock's new context.
"My mother is a primary school teacher and my fathers worked in a bicycle shop. He's retired now."
John laughed out loud. He couldn't stop himself. He was almost screaming and felt like his body was a conduit for all the emotions and anxiety he had repressed in the last few hours. He calmed down and realised he was gripping Sherlock's biceps. His friend looked puzzled. John gasped, wiped a tear from his eye and...
"...its just so normal. I'm disappointed in you really. And maybe a little hysterical" he added as an after thought.
Out of the moon adorned door and into the midst of John's maelstrom burst a tiny grey-haired lady in her middle age. She would have been the spit of Sherlock except for the difference in height and dress. She was wearing tangerine pantaloons.
"Sherlock!" she exclaimed, standing on tip-toes to get her arms around his neck. John was treated to a briefer embrace; about twelve kisses to each cheek; and a powerful waft of patchouli oil.
"So, are you here to 'meet the parents'?" John blushed and for once Sherlock beat him to "We're not a couple"
"Oh really?" His mother's tone almost seemed to imply disbelief. What was it, John mused, that caused every person they met to make that presumption? Bloody liberal society.
"Come in, come in" chirped Sherlock's mother. Despite her colourful attire she reminded John of a blackbird. It was something in her quick motherly movements and the way she cocked her head to the side examining the pair of them.
They followed the orange pantaloons into a cluttered, lime coloured corridor filled with boots, anoraks and piles of junk mail so high they looked like they had been begun before even Mycroft. John was struck by a thought.
"Sherlock" he hissed as they removed their shoes "what's your mother's name?"
"Nia" said both Holmes together "It means bright in Welsh" added the woman in question.
"Come and meet my husband" said Nia seizing John firmly by the forearm and whisking him into a small kitchen. The kitchen was dominated by the presence of Sherlock's father. "David" Sherlock supplied. He was huge. Not fat, but by no means slender and even sitting John could see he would stand well over six feet. His face was covered with an enormous, black, Victorian style beard. His skin was deep chestnut. John felt somehow that he was more a tree than a person. He was so large and seemed oddly magnetic. A force of nature rather than a fallible man. His stillness was quite different from Mycroft's cautious lethargy, somehow more primal.
The restless energy of John's flatmate was clearly inherited from his mother. Nia was almost skipping around the kitchen stirring pots of filling kettles and getting only partway through a task before feeling he urgency of another. Sherlock was rocking from foot to foot his big toe wiggling out from the hole in one grey sock. He looked oddly out of place.
As John was watching him Sherlock sprung into action.
"You'll be sleeping in Mycroft's room." he said seizing John's wrist so hard it was almost painful. "You can take your stuff up." John was practically dragged from the room; up a flight of stairs (magenta) to a landing with two blue doors painted with sunflowers and one with mermaids. Above them it said 'Sherlock', 'Mycroft' and 'Bathroom'. Sherlock dropped his bag outside his own door and went through 'Mycroft'. John followed.
The room inside was a testament to Mycroft's ambitions and struck an odd dichotomy with the rest of the house. All in dark wood with green leather upholstery, it looked more like the office of a cabinet minister than a bedroom.
"Spooky isn't it" said Sherlock. John grinned.
"Can I see yours" said John in a fit of, slightly impolite, curiosity. He had never had cause to go into Sherlock's room in the flat. "Leave your stuff then." said Sherlock simply.
Behind the 'Sherlock' door, the room was painted a vivid cerulean. This was not the décor John had expected, he suspected a mother's hand. The small aeroplanes and fire engines on the walls confirmed John's suspicions that it hadn't been redecorated for a score of years. Oddly the room felt like home. The place was littered with Sherlock's detritus: microscopes, forensic journals, pickled animal parts and an enormous collection of detective novels – from Agatha Christie to Georgette Heyer to Dorothy L Sayers.
"Reminds me of home" remarked John.
"No" Sherlock paused and looked about. "No BMJs, no cardigans, no skull, no gun."
John picked his way across the floor and Sherlock joined him. They sat on the bed. "I like the fire engines."
"You do? Mycroft tells me they're childish."
John chuckled. Sherlock still seemed tense holding himself stiffly. John ached to relax him, to reassure him somehow.
"The fireman..." Sherlock began "... were forerunners of the skull."
John grinned fully now. "So, I am in the glorious line, painted firemen, human skull, John Watson."
"You have other uses." said Sherlock smiling wickedly "they couldn't help me feed the chickens" and with that he sprung off the bed, knocking over a pile of foreign periodicals and bounded downstairs. John, still chuckling, followed at a more measured pace.