Title: in instants, in moments, in seconds
Fandom: Sherlock Holmes (Ritchieverse)
Rating: Teen and Up Audiences
Pairing: Sherlock Holmes and Mary Morstan; Sherlock Holmes/Mary Morstan[/John Watson].
Length: ~1500 words
Content notes: jealousy, negotiations of an amorous nature.
Author notes: For fan_flashworks Challenge #29, "Interruptions". Many, many thanks to breathedout for setting me right where I went wrong.
Summary: It's cruel, Holmes thinks, now that his time with Watson can be measured in instants, in moments, in seconds, that he should be forced instead to waste them with her.

* * *


10.

Watson steps away from the table and her eyes are upon him. Such a pretty girl. Holmes dislikes her excessively, of course. He sips his wine and tries to avoid her. Difficult, of course, when forced into this kind of close physical proximity. It's not a large table.

"He loves you," she says, startlingly and blisteringly direct.

"Why, Miss Morstan," he says, giving her a wide smile. "I didn't know you cared."

"He loves me too," she replies, and matches his smile tooth for tooth.

Watson returns.



9.

She sits to pour the tea. Watson has gone back downstairs for some reason or another: a book for Holmes, Holmes thinks he said, left in the pocket of Watson's coat. Holmes wasn't paying attention.

"New earrings," Holmes observes. "Or—new to you, I should say." Pearls. Small, but fine.

"From my mother," she says. "An engagement present. They were my great-grandmother's."

Holmes leans forward in his chair. "May I?"

"Of course," she says, tilting her head to the side, trusting and open. Curious; you'd think he'd have cured her of that by now.

Holmes regards the smooth white line of her throat, thinking, Of course, of course. Watson never could keep his head around blondes.

"Well?" she asks. "The takings of some dastardly plot? Stolen from some foreign princess? Christened with the blood of murdered children?"

Her hair is delicate and soft, as she is delicate and soft. How careful Watson must be with her. Holmes touches the hollow between her clavicle and her scapula, an unforgivable liberty. She doesn't pull away.

"Very pretty," Holmes says, hearing Watson's tread on the stairs. Holmes leans back, so she does, too. He adds, "Your earrings."



8.

"Do you trust me?" he asks, and she says, "No," so he throws her off a train.



7.

He isn't in London much, after, but he is occasionally. Whenever he can manage it. He sees Watson every now and again, when he is. He sees Watson's wife often. There's nothing to it; she simply has occasion to go out more frequently than her husband does. Watson is burying himself in work. Holmes is too, he thinks, but—well, that's enough of that.

Holmes sometimes sees them. They don't ever see him. He's careful of that.

(He tends to forget, in between times, how many buttons women's clothing has, how small they are, how infuriating, especially to fasten or undo upon one's self, without a second set of hands.)



6.

Holmes's first Christmas back, Watson is examining a very late-arriving patient in his surgery next door, while snow swirls outside the windows and Holmes pretends to have some kind of rapport with Watson's wife. Holmes hasn't seen Watson in a month; before that, a week; before that, ten days; before that, three years. It's cruel, Holmes thinks, now that his time with Watson can be measured in instants, in moments, in seconds, that he should be forced instead to waste them with her.

"At some point we ought to come to some kind of an accord," she says.

"Did we not already?" Holmes smiles at her. "I thought you won."

"It wasn't a battle, Sherlock," she says, and his mouth tightens. "It wasn't a defeat."

The connecting door to the surgery squeaks open, and Holmes looks away.



5.

"Do you trust me?" she asks, when Watson has stepped away from the table, and Holmes says, "Not particularly," so she smiles and pours him another glass of wine.



4.

She comes to visit him in Baker Street. She talks of nothing for a quarter of an hour; if she'd bothered to ask Watson, he could've told her it wouldn't work.

"Why are you here?" Holmes asks finally. She's wearing those little pearl earrings her mother gave her, all those years ago. Holmes can recall, with perfect clarity, the feel of her smooth white skin beneath his fingertips.

"John loves you," she says.

"Old ground," he counters.

"And he loves me too," she says.

"I want him Wednesday through Sunday and whenever I have a case, is that what you want me to say?" he says, and she pushes to her feet.

"I want you to stop forcing him to choose," she says, then falls silent and sits again, as Mrs. Hudson opens the door with the tea.



3.

"You come to me," he says, with his hand on her wrist in the corridor of the hospital as through the door, John sleeps, again, bandaged but breathing. Again, again. Holmes can't bear himself, tonight. "You always come to me," he repeats. "But you don't go to him. You haven't gone to him. I know that you haven't."

She raises her chin. Her eyes are bright and hot. What beautiful children they would have, Holmes thinks, not for the first time, always with that same cruel twist of combined despair and exaltation that it has been six years and yet they do not. "Of course I come to you," she says, low. "You know him. His sense of honor isn't merciful."

"Oh," he says. "And me?"

She smiles, not kind. "You aren't merciful, either," she says, and he drops her wrist, because John is stirring.




2.

"Does he know yet?" he asks, that Christmas. Another Christmas. Three Christmases, now, for Holmes, at Cavendish Place. This year he forgot the wine.

"Know what?" she asks.

"About your..." He waves a hand. "Assault upon my defenses."

She pauses, eyebrow raised. "Is it time for me to tell him?" she asks.

"Wine!" Watson says, exultant, cold bursting in through the door behind him, and Holmes steps away from his wife.



1.

At the opera she manages to sit beside him, with Watson on her other side. Agreeing to come was a terrible idea, Holmes thinks, however much he may enjoy Verdi. In the interval Watson leaves to fetch them champagne; Holmes feels that he really can't ignore the implications of this as a gesture, but she grabs his wrist and holds him down in his seat. Stronger than she looks, he thinks. He could still break her in half, if he tried.

She turns her hand, and her thumb skims across his palm.

He swallows. "You are so willing to betray him," he says. She is close enough to him that he can smell Watson's cologne still clinging to her skin.

"For someone who claims to be such a student of human relationships," she says, eyes demure and downcast, "you certainly haven't made a very complete study of your own."

"Go to hell," he says, soft.

"I will do nothing without him," she says, "and you can do nothing without him, and if you can't see what that requires between you and me—"

"Why should it require anything between you and me?" he says, very quietly. They are not alone, here; even if they were, he doesn't think he would be able to say what he is thinking: what sort of communion is required between mistress and wife? He doesn't like the casting.

She meets his eyes. "Because John is John," she says, very simply. "There is no room in his heart for either of us to be left alone."

"He has already left me alone," Holmes says, pulling his wrist free, and she says, "Has he," and folds her hands in her lap as Watson returns with their champagne.



0.

He goes to visit her in Cavendish Place. He says nothing for a quarter of an hour and paces, and she sits and watches him, still and calm. It is nearing noon; Watson will be in for luncheon, soon. Holmes can smell... potted chicken, he thinks, and mushrooms. She's a good cook, he knows. It always seems somehow unfair.

"What do you want from me?" he asks.

"I want you to come to us Wednesday through Sunday," she says, "and whenever you have a case." She tilts her head to the side, baring that same familiar curve of smooth, white throat. "The rest of the week optional, of course."

He looks over at her curtains. They're very white, still smelling of sunshine, though where she found any of that in London is beyond him, and lemon juice. Spring cleaning. Mary Watson, dutiful housewife. Naturally.

"I think it's best that we be very clear what we're discussing," he says, finally. He has come very near to her.

"Yes," she agrees. "That would be best."

Her shirtwaist is high collared, her shoulders covered up. He touches them anyway. If she's warm (he knows she is warm) he can't feel it, not through her shirtwaist. Women's clothing is always so elaborate. He wonders how many layers of fabric are now between them. Sherlock wonders how many buttons it would take, to bare that hollow between her clavicle and her scapula, beneath his thumb.

The connecting door to the surgery squeaks open.

"Mary?" John calls.

"We're in the sitting room, darling," Mary calls back, without pulling away.



Archived: 20 November 2012, at AO3.