Re-watched the second movie yesterday. This is the result.
There might be a second part but no promises.
It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place.
-Henry Louis Mencken
Watson tells her it's a bad idea. Mary agrees.
But her mother insists on it, and in any other situation he would quite agree. But this is their situation, a strange one, always, and the good doctor cannot think of a single favorable outcome to brunch with Holmes.
(Dares not think of a favorable outcome with Holmes.)
"If he's to be best man at my dear Mary's wedding," her mother says, not unreasonably, "It would be rude of us not to meet beforehand."
Watson flicks a desperate look across the table and is met with the reassuring squeeze of a delicate gloved hand.
The press of her ring into his hand is uncomfortable; cold and he feels the urge to itch at the skin.
The late Mrs. Morstan is a frail woman, beauty still lingering in the unusual copper of her hair, in the slender curve of her waist. But years of grief and her mournful black dress leach the color from her skin.
The high backed chair does nothing to lessen the sever lines of her face, the emerging grey at the temples.
"I hold you in the highest esteem, Mr. Watson."
Something about the sentence strikes him, stirs in his chest and he almost misses the next words, straining at the edges of his memory to remember. A prickly uncomfortably feeling swells in his chest.
The feeling of missing a piece of the puzzle; he hates it still.
His hand twitches away from Mary and he covers the motion smoothly by pouring himself more wine.
Across the table, his future mother-in-law declares:
"I assure you, whoever you chose will be another welcome addition to the family."
Watson swallows past the dryness of his throat and sips at the wine with an agreeably smile. It's a pure deep red, the color of priceless emeralds and expendable blood and reminds him of terribly of Holmes.
There is no way this will end but badly.
"Agreed."
The doctor blinks astonished at his friend, at the man slouched deep in his favorite armchair, puffing at his darkly polished pipe carelessly as if the world were that simple.
It isn't; he wouldn't want it to be.
(Which one of them does he mean by that; does it matter?)
"Pardon?" He asks, feeling ridiculous as his rehearsed speech crumbles to nothing, his reasons and bribery and blackmail.
The brick wall that he's built one agitated step at a time, pacing in circles late at night with Holmes on his mind, pretending the motion doesn't feel so familiar.
The problem is, that feels familiar too.
Watson realizes he's staring and quickly looks away, eyes flitting from the strange paper models hanging from the ceiling to the desk overflowing with telegrams, unopened letters and butchered newspapers, a tea cup sitting full and abandoned on today's edition.
It all feels so familiar.
The doctor looks down, angry at the ridiculous warmth curling in his stomach. The sensation he sometimes, in his weaker moments, would call home.
Unwillingly, his eyes are drawn back to the man across from him. To the unshaven chin, the slant of dark eyebrows and startling hazel eyes—intelligent and cutting and watching him closely.
It is an uncomfortably pleasant feeling. Or perhaps, pleasantly uncomfortable?
A huff of smoke curls up from a mouth turned down with annoyance. For a moment, Watson allows himself to wonder what Holmes' exasperation would taste like if he stood close enough to breathe it in.
(A little like a favorable outcome.)
Instead, he curls his hands around the familiar wooden arms of his own worn leather chair and marvels at the way his fingers fall into place, into the worn grooves. How easy it is to fall into old patterns.
And this is such a pretty one.
"My dear man," the detective declares heavily, as if the weight of the world rests on the curving angles his shoulders make through his crumbled suit. Perhaps it does.
Once Watson promised himself he would learn all of Sherlock's secrets. He thinks another broken vow and ignores the way he leans forward into the man's next words.
Worn grooves and old routines.
"Must you act so surprised, Watson?"
The answer that springs to mind is, I do. But it taste bitter, wilting like flowers in his throat and reminding him of inevitability and white dresses.
"Yes," Watson says and looks away.