i. "Know that today, you sit between the woman you love and the man you saved. In short, the two people that love you most in all this world."
John fumbles to grab onto something, because it hits him then that this is the beginning of the end of an era and that notion is fast becoming the matrix of his agony. Thinking his sudden emotion to be some fleeting, sentimental thing, Mary intertwines her fingers with his and squeezes once, twice. She smiles. John cannot look at her [he feels guilty, but that doesn't make any sense] so he trains his eyes on Sherlock, who is painted with this dark sweetness, who glances awkwardly down at him, meeting eyes, and John's heart drops like an asteroid hitting earth.
He thinks, I love you, I love you, oh, and that's the tipping point.
[that's when he realises]
ii. It's entirely inappropriate, of course, but he keeps imagining full lips [not female] moving against his own, and callused, pale hands spasming on his shoulders, and fuck, he knows he will never have it.
There's great loneliness in that, and a strange, numbing beauty.
He sits at the table cleaning his gun. Doesn't speak for hours.
iii. "You. It's always you. John Watson, you keep me right."
At that moment, John thinks, right before he vomits into the sink, I would have drowned for him, burned for him, bled for him, died for him, and he doesn't know any of that.
iv. "Get a cab," John hisses into his mobile, months later. "I don't care what it takes, Mycroft, just get a bloody cab to the airport."
He hangs up before the British Government has time to protest.
v. "There's something I've meant to say, always," Sherlock says later, on the tarmac, "and I never have. So, seeing that this is probably the last time we'll ever see each other I may as well say it now."
Oh, God. Is he—? He's going to— [do it, say it, articulate the truth for both of them: suppose I were to begin by saying I've fallen in love with you]
John inhales sharply, heart twitching beneath his ribs, and looks right into Sherlock's eyes. He sees himself reflected there, sees the devotion, absolute.
vi. "Sherlock is actually a girl's name."
John laughs and laughs and laughs and it's the worst moment of his life, worse than Mary and the empty house and that goddamn gun. Oh Sherlock, he thinks, you've no idea have you? Even if you did, you 'd want nothing to do with it. Nothing to do with [my] human error.
vii. "The game is never over," he assures John.
Then he holds out his hand and John takes it, skin on skin, like a first kiss, and they don't shake; they merely hold on, a twin death grip, two almost lovers trying to postpone the inevitable for just one heartbeat longer.
Please,
just
one
more
m
o
m
e
n
t
viii. "To the very best of times."
It occurs to John that he's never before been so intimate with death. This, what they have together, it's the corpse, except this time it takes no detective work to deduce the cause of expiry.
He walks away with a mouth full of dried blood, back to his pregnant wife.
The plane leaves earth. Disappears into the grey.
ix. youitsalwaysyoujohnwatsonyoukeepmerightyouitsalwaysyoujohnwatsonyoukeepmerightyouitsalwaysyoualwaysyoualwaysyoualwaysalwaysalwaysy
o—
u
[sherlock is actually a girl's name]