In Sheets of Shining Memory, Holmes-Watson, 'Challenge'
Title: In Sheets of Shining Memory
Author: azure_horizon
Pairing/Characters: Mary, Watson-Holmes, Watson/Mary
Rating: G
Word Count: 1,105
Spoilers: movie
Challenge: 1 - Hands/hand holding
Summary: She doesn’t make any deductions and it is certainly not because she can’t. She simply does not need to.
Notes/Warnings: None.
Disclaimer: I don’t own Sherlock Holmes; those rights belong to some very lucky people.
Mary watches from her perch on the day chair in the lounge, some months after Sherlock Holmes’ disdain for her marriage to John Watson has subsided, in quiet amusement as her husband and his friend flap around one another. It’s not an unusual sight - or rather, it had not used to be an unusual sight until the months surrounding her wedding - but she finds absurdity in the way they try to pretend they do not want to touch each other.
From her observations of Sherlock Holmes - not only when in his company but on the rare occasion she happened to see him mingling in society - she has come to know him as both verbose and gesticulative; he speaks not only with his voice but with his hands and demonstrative twitches in his facial muscles as he weaves a pretty tale of gore and heroics. Often, her John is on the sidelines watching and smiling along, offering his own thoughts on particular cases but those are usually kept for his own stories; the ones that no less verbose or demonstrative than Holmes’, but merely told through a different medium.
Unlike some, her husband does not revel in the sound of his own voice.
These things she has observed with the rest of London, smiling and enthralled by Holmes’ sweeping gestures and quirky hand flicks and dismissive gusts of breath. She has also had occasion to witness the stories told in a more private setting - usually the sitting rooms of either Baker Street or Cavendish Place. And it is in these settings, with Gladstone following the sounds of his masters’ voices as though at a match of tennis, that her John comes as alive as Holmes. His own hands gesticulate and point, slapping at Holmes when the other man tries to humiliate him with fabricated stories that make Mary peal with laughter. She’s become familiar with the casual flicks and pats and attention-calling touches from each man imparted upon the other, just as she has become familiar to Watson’s touch upon her.
But as she watches them in the quiet setting of Cavendish Place’s hearth-side snug, she cannot help but wonder at the ridiculous distance between them. It has been there for far too long and she will admit that she had not actually noticed it at the time; it is only now that she thinks back to the deliberate swerve of bodies away from one another, the careful inches of space between them on the couch that she considers it. But for some reason, tonight the room crackled with anticipation and she can almost imagine she is in the rooms at Baker Street as Holmes potters about at his chemistry set. The tension is palpable and she can feel the tiny hairs on her arms stand on end.
Yet they resist and, short minutes later, Holmes leaps to his feet announcing his departure. Mary does not have time to stand to offer to show him out before the detective had fled the room. She looks over to John who appears equally as bewildered as herself, his eyes lingering on the empty doorway.
--
It is a week later before she sees Mr Holmes again. John had left sometime early in the morning to attend to some patients at the hospital and she had been conversing with the cook about dinner when a grimy young man was led into the kitchen with a note from her husband. She later found out he was one of Baker Street’s Irregulars but as his dirt marred hand reached out with her note, she had wanted to take him to her bosom and run him a bath. As it was, she took the note and tried to pay him but he declined, insisting that both Mr’s Holmes and Watson had paid him quite enough.
So she found herself at Baker Street, in the upstairs sitting room, waiting for dinner to be served by Mrs Hudson. The rooms were in their usual disarray; Holmes’ clothing (some of which she recognised as John’s, actually) littered the floor (she knows John used to pester him to at least try to make an effort but he had long since given up and Mary had long since learned to avert her eyes from the mess - most of the time); the curtains were thrown open and the window opened a crack and Mary could see the iridescent glances of dust in the stray strands of sunlight; piles of books on the floor acted as platforms for cups of what she presumed had once been tea; there were shards of glass around Holmes’ work table and at the table in the corner that she knew had once been John’s, there was an upturned jar of ink, droplets of which were still dripping lethargically onto the floor.
All of it was as normal, in its usual place. And that included Holmes, who, wrapped in his ratty dressing gown with his hair in unseemly wild curls, was sat at her husband’s feet in front of the armchair, the entire left side of his body pressed against John’s right leg.
Quickly, sShe glances back to the book that lies open in her lap when Holmes looks up to glance around the room, interrupting her reverie. Her eyes find their way back to the duo across from her a few minutes later when she sees her husband reach down, his eyes still on his newspaper, and settle his hand on Holmes’ shoulder. Holmes cants his head slightly and Mary sees the way the edge of his ear skims the back of John’s hand, the way the tiniest of smiles alights on each of their faces and she smiles as Holmes takes in a deep breath before he buries himself further into John, his shoulder almost disappearing behind her husband’s knee.
When Mrs Hudson calls them to dinner, they all jump slightly - even Holmes, who had eventually let his head rest against John’s thigh as he read from a book written in an obscure language - at the intrusion on their comfortable silence. John stands first, his hand falling automatically to pull Holmes to his feet even as he takes the steps towards Mary to help her to hers. Over John’s shoulder she meets Holmes’ eyes and she takes a moment to study the man.
She does not make any deductions and it is certainly not because she can’t. She simply does not need to. He seems to understand and nods slightly, a fleeting smile crossing his lips before he breezes passed both of them airily.
Mary notices the way his fingers skim the edge of John’s coat sleeve, his hand, as he passes.
She smiles.