Only In the Mind of Sherlock ch.1
A/N: I've had weddings on the brain (probably because my own is quickly approaching (!) ), and I figured, in some crazy upside-down world where Sherlock would ever even think to ask John to marry him, he just *would*do so over a body. So here is that story, as it is in my head.
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Sherlock remembered the very first time marriage had been introduced to his vast and complex mind. He had been seven, and Mycroft, fourteen when some second-cousin-thrice-removed invited the Holmes family to her wedding. The invitation that was sent was on an expensive French paper, and the raised lettering had real gold leaf on it. Sherlock had been more interested in deducing what type of calligraphy pen nub had been used to write their address on the envelope before it occurred to him to ask what they were being invited to. He knew Mummy would try to feed him some drivel about "soul mates" and "love" and other such nonsense—so he'd asked Mycroft instead.
"What does marriage mean, exactly?"
"Nowadays? It's a legal agreement that everything belonging to two people is shared property, mostly. It used to mean that a couple's… well, that God was giving them permission to have children." Mycroft knew better than to think that, even as young as he was, Sherlock didn't already know what he meant, but that was no reason to be crude in his explanation. "It still means that to a number of people, I suppose."
Sherlock's impossibly pale and knowing eyes narrowed as he processed this information. At that point, his mind palace was more of a crowded, disorganized townhouse, so it took a little longer than it really should have. After a few minutes of silence, he looked back at his brother. "And that's why it has to be done in a church?"
"It doesn't have to be in a church. Quite a lot of people get married in churches, but it can also be done by a registrar."
"Oh." Sherlock processed this information as well. "Why would someone do that? Why can't they just share their things? People get bored of each other after a while, don't they?"
Mycroft's lips tightened. As he was wont to do, Sherlock was showing far more insight than was good for him. Mycroft spent the better part of the next two hours trying to explain to his little brother that yes, people sometimes get bored of one another's company, but people get married anyway, and yes, sometimes it is for reasons other than what Mummy would call "love" and no, it is not a good idea to tell Mummy that their cousin is "stupid" or that the marriage will fall apart within six months no matter what you deduced from the envelope, because that's the way it is, Sherlock ,now let it go.
Years later, after Sherlock had deleted large portions of his days at the manor, he held on to this memory, because on some level it still baffled him. Why did people put themselves through all these legal proceedings when more than half of the relationships failed anyway? Even when he tried to take sentiment into consideration, he still couldn't understand it. You could love someone, and share your life and your possessions and your finances with them without having a piece of paper from God or Government (or both, or whatever you preferred) saying you were allowed to. Yes, there were the various insurance and medical visitation benefits and what-have-you, but if that was the only thing you could claim out of the arrangement, then the whole system seemed a bit antiquated. Sherlock smugly thought to himself that at least his marriage to The Work had never required any bloody registrar. He would never understand what would drive someone to want to attach themselves, legally or otherwise, to another person for what would supposedly be the rest of their natural life.
And then came John Watson.
After more than three years together, (not counting the Great Hiatus, as they euphemistically referred to it) John still turned Sherlock's mind upside down with frightening regularity. He was forever surprising the great detective, and that was a large part of what made him fall in love with the man in the first place. That, and his heart so frequently worn on his sleeve, which only made him all the more endearing. And his smile. And his steady gun hand. And his… ahem, well, Sherlock could go on about his partner's qualities for quite a long time, having spent a great many hours meticulously cataloguing them for storage in his Mind Palace. Suffice to say, these two loved each other very much and now he was beginning to understand what all the fuss about marriage was about. He couldn't image life without his handsome army doctor, and knew that no matter what, they would be together until the bitter end. But John was a man who appreciated gestures, especially sentimental ones (so long as they came from Sherlock, of course), and the more Sherlock thought about it, the more appeal calling John husband became.
It was a perfectly ordinary night, when Sherlock was laying, prayer-in-repose on the sofa, listening to John slowly peck away at his keyboard, that he made up his mind. The detective opened one eye and swiveled it over to John. His tongue was poked between his lips, at the corner of his mouth as he worked on his blog. After a few moments, he stopped typing and rested his chin in the palm of his left hand. Sherlock could just barely see John's stubby, weathered digits cradling his cheek from behind his laptop's screen. He envisioned a simple gold band encircling his ring finger, glinting brightly in the soft light of their flat. Just like that, he knew he was going to ask John Watson to marry him. Sherlock closed his eye again and smiled to himself. Now the only question was how… and he never could resist a touch of the dramatic.