Mary Morstan's eyes flitted rapidly under their eyelids. Her arms were ramrod straight against her sides. He stood before her, hands tucked neatly into his pants pockets, lips curled in an almost friendly teasing smile, his eyes promising pain and punishment. "Did you miss me, Mary?" asked Moriarty.
A scoff, that she felt more than heard, at the back of her head, made her turn. No one had snuck up on her since she was a teenager. Yet here was Magnussen, his damp sandpaper fingers reaching forward… to touch her cheek… to caress. She cringed inwardly, but forced her expression to remain neutral.
A bell rang out, and all three of them looked up, searching for its source. "No," said Magnussen softly, before vaporizing. Behind her Moriarty was gone as well.
Her eyes, still closed, stilled, as she took in her surroundings. She was in her own bed. Peacefully alone. She could hear John in the kitchen. She reached a sweaty hand to pick up her ringing phone from the nightstand, and turned off the alarm. She took a shaky breath and got up, making her way to the bathroom. She stood with her hands on the sink and stared at her reflection in the mirror. That was incredibly vivid. She straightened, ran her hands through her hair, then bent over and hurled in the toilet.
Oh. Oh. She walked back out to her bedroom. She needed to make sure. She dressed like she usually did for work and told John she needed to see the florist. She got into her car and drove to a pharmacy on the opposite side of the city.
"John, you're amazing!" This was said not in awe or excitement, but in incredible frustration, as Sherlock slammed shut his laptop. One hour and half a measly paragraph. He wrote all the time for his website and never ever had he been at a loss for words. But John Watson was too amazing to write a speech about. Sherlock paced in front of his window.
Lestrade had tried to help, but Sherlock couldn't stand his help for more than ten minutes before asking him to leave. He'd seemed somewhat put off anyway—something about having to call off some choppers. Sherlock wasn't entirely sure—he'd been filtering.
It wasn't that he didn't have anything to say. Oh, quite the contrary. He had too much to say. John, you keep me right. John Watson, you are my heart.
I will burn the heart out of you.
He blinked the memories of Moriarty's voice and Magnussen's bonfire away.
John Watson, you think you're the sane one, but you keep me sane.
His mind started compiling this useless list of its own accord.
John's anger, which was only bearable because he knew it never lasted very long. John thinking he was a show-off, only because he didn't know Sherlock only showed off when John was there. All the smiles he only had to hide around John, because of all the smiles only John brought out of him. Sherlock maybe not being a stranger to love at all.
Sherlock was no expert on weddings, but he was pretty sure none of these things were acceptable for a best man to say… about the groom… out loud.
He stopped pacing and sat down hard at his desk, rereading for the umpteenth time the four lines he'd managed to write. Then he highlighted the whole thing with the cursor and deleted it, sighing dramatically.
I'm pregnant. It was definite now. Mary paced in front of her bed, the pregnancy test in her hand. She couldn't decide how she felt about this. There were pros and cons, and they seemed pretty equally balanced.
She had to tell John. Her eyes narrowed. He would be thrilled. He'd spend his days prancing around her like a puppy. That would not be… ideal at the moment. She had been counting on keeping him at least partially busy with Sherlock until the wedding. Her fingers drummed against the stick in her hand. How to keep Sherlock involved…
But of course. She didn't need to involve him. All she had to do was lay out the signs, and he'd involve himself. So, she wouldn't tell John until after the wedding. In fact she wouldn't tell him at all. Now… what signs would be clear enough without being suspiciously obvious to Sherlock Holmes? She closed her eyes and started making a mental list, with vomiting as the first item.
"Sherlock," called John's approaching voice from the doorway.
"Shut up, John." The last thing he needed right now was John's voice in his head.
"What? Why?"
Sherlock turned toward the baffled voice. "Oh. You're actually here."
Only someone who knew Sherlock Holmes well could catch the surprise in his flat tone. And John knew Sherlock better than anyone. He shook his head in amusement. "So you're still doing the thing where you don't realize when I'm actually here and when I'm not? That's comforting."
Sherlock perceived a silent challenge in John's barely raised eyebrow and the soft upturn of his mouth. His eyes locked on that mouth, Sherlock approached him, not stopping until he was just this side of too close, and raised his own eyebrows in retaliation. He smirked as he saw John fumble to remember why he'd come here. It took a few seconds.
"Mary said you have some invitation designs? She wants me to pick one. I texted you, but you don't look like you know why I'm here , so…" He trailed off.
Mary. He walked abruptly back to his post by the window. "They're in the second drawer of my desk. I personally like the one with the white background and grey accents. It's the most… decent."
John pulled them out and leafed through. "It's the most boring." Some more ruffling. "Actually, the white background with no accents and black text is the most boring."
Boring is good sometimes, John. "Oh, that's the one Mary likes, is it?"
"How did you… Never mind." He set the samples down on the desk. "Right. The boring one it is."
Sherlock held his tongue.
The list of John's Amazing Qualities continued to populate in his mind. He stopped filtering it out and started parsing it for something actually appropriate he could put in his speech.