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When Quinn Holmes is young he bares little resemblance to his brothers; where Sherlock at fourteen is all sharp elbows, strong shoulders and knobby knees, a precarious storm cloud with wild curls and angry eyes, Quinn is slight and bird-boned at nine, with eyes like globes of speckled glass blown over large in his pale face, quiet as a ghost and slight as one too, inclined to pilfering their mother's comprehensive math texts and tearing apart small electronic devices around the home. In the wake of Sherlock's feverish energy and outspoken disposition, Quinn is less tumultuous and generally less excitable; his breakout moments, rare as they are, come in the midst of academic debate, or in gaming and puzzle-solving, and even then he is even-toned and underwhelming in comparison.
He's a bit shy for a boy, their father says over Christmas dinner, as if Quinn might not hear him; it's a transparent attempt to goad the boy into speaking up for himself, a ploy which Sherlock quite rightly denounces aloud for the whole family to scoff at. Naturally, their father flushes a truly impressive shade of scarlet, the Scot in him never more obvious than it is in his temper, and it's part embarrassment and part outrage that gets him going, but a sidelong glance from Mrs. Holmes cuts the legs out from under him and other than the quiet, habitual "Sherlock, please," from their mother, no one says aught else about it. This is not the first time, and it's unlikely to be the last. For any of it.
(The family is used to Sherlock's eccentricity and truly the only person who can temper him is Mycroft, for what good it does; at twenty-one years old, Mycroft is coming into his worldly, reliable aura, having fully devoted himself to crafting the facade he will utilize for years to come; he is seldom home and when he is, his ambivalence toward Sherlock, and toward Quinn, is notably at odds with his attentiveness to his middling appointment as a junior staff member to some government buttonman or minister. Sherlock finds it disdainful and says so, loudly and often, which garners little or no reaction from the eldest Holmes son most days. Moreover, Mycroft's desire to stay disassociated from the family squabbles is also one of those things, like Sherlock's discourteous behaviors, that goes unremarked upon because it is so commonplace as to be unquestioned.)
And yet tonight, sitting at their father's right hand at the dinner table, it is Mycroft who glances at Quinn over the laden board and decorative centerpiece and says, rather blandly,
"It's not gender but intelligence to which shyness is so oft allied, Father."
To which Quinn's small brow, smooth of consternation a moment before, wrinkles ever so briefly; as he looks up at his eldest brother—a passingly compassionate but usually distant, unapproachable figure—and says nothing, aware even at his young age that he is being stood up for, however unusually.
Sherlock, who is far less distant and also far less inclined to discretion, stabs at the peas on his plate and kicks at the table legs, grumbling something in Latin that's too quick for Quinn's still basic grasp of the language to catch, but to which Mycroft replies, with only the barest of smiles, "Don't be a child, Sherlock."
Sherlock throws his steak knife across the table and it misses Mycroft by an inch.
It hits the far wall with a sharp clack and drops to the floor with a stuttering clatter.
Mycroft, of course, is unbothered but their father sits bolt upright in his chair and looks down the length of the table at his middle child, bluster building in his face for what is sure to be a searing admonition; their mother reaches for her husband's hand across the table, a precursor to her usual forestall, an unnecessary intervention because Sherlock is already throwing down his napkin and making like he might push out of his chair entirely to flounce from the room in spectacular form.
But it's Quinn, with his still-furrowed brow and his glass-bobble eyes narrowed to slim half-moons as he studies the knife lying at the base of the wall it collided with—with his spoonful of mashed potatoes paused half way to his mouth—that stills everyone when he says, more loudly than usual and as mild as a spring day, "Not enough torque."
Their mother and father go suddenly quiet and still, all the air completely gone out of them both.
Sherlock freezes mid-motion in his effort to get up, his hands on the edge of the table as he turns to give his baby brother a speculative glance. It's not a kind sort of look, not the kind an elder brother should give his younger sibling, though undoubtedly Sherlock is not the first; indeed, Mycroft has given him that look, once or thrice. It says, quite frankly, perhaps you're not an idiot after all.
"Torque, yes." Sherlock says, though only after a long moment where no one seems to breathe. "Yes, you're right of course. The balance on that particular style of blade isn't optimal for throwing. Ruins the angular velocity." He smiles, all tight lips over strong white teeth. "More's the pity, don't you think?"
And Quinn only nods, very solemnly, and shoves his potato-covered spoon into his mouth, though his gaze does slide to Mycroft, eyes wide again and apologetic now.
For his own part however, Mycroft—utterly dismissive of the scene as if it had never happened—only dabs at the corners of his mouth with his linen napkin and gives Sherlock and Quinn both a smile that might pass as fond, humming a note in the back of his throat that is somehow conclusive.
"On to pudding then."