When John Watson first met Mary Swanson there weren't bright sparks or life changing glances. There was a slight crash, a box of flying pasta, a mumbled apology and nothing more. It was when they bumped into each other a second time in the same shopping center that John started to get suspicious. He helped her collect her items for a second time, suggested that she replace the can of beans after its second swan dive across the aisle and offered his number.
She bit her lip and accepted. It wasn't perfect, but it worked.
They went out for coffee a week later. Wandering lazily around London's streets with paper cups in hand. Shy smiles were exchanged and they agreed to meet up for dinner the next time. That was when she asked him.
She wasn't an idiot. She could see that John was grieving. She just hadn't expected the answer to be Sherlock Holmes.
"Were you two...?"
"No. Nothing like that. We were just... He was my friend. My best friend."
"Tell me about him."
"What?"
"Tell me about him. What was he like?"
A pause.
"A pain in the arse."
They saw each other more often after that. It was as if a wall that had held them apart had been brought down. They talked about Sherlock. Not a lot, but it wasn't a secret. They visited his grave together and Mary realized how much she owed this man in the ground. How much John had grown from their acquaintanceship. She didn't blame him for the pain that had been tearing through John when they had met, but she did wonder how a man who was so revered, so loved, even in a platonic sense, could feel compelled to throw himself off the side of a building.
Two weeks after he met Mary, John got a steady job at a clinic.
Two months after he met Mary, he began to sleep every night.
Three months after he met her, he wasn't sleeping alone.
Two years after that, he was nervously pacing the floor of a room tucked behind the alter of a church.
But once he was standing on that alter and Mary was floating towards him in white, the nerves fell away and for the first time, they stayed away. Even as Mary curled around him contentedly in their hotel-room bed on the French Riviera, the nerves did not return. For the first time in a long time, John felt like he was exactly where he was supposed to be.
"John?"
"Hum?" John normally would have said "Yes, my love?" or something of that nature, but it's hard to express when your mouth is filled with toast.
"I love you."
John swallowed the toast and walked over to his new wife.
"I love you too." He said, pressing a soft kiss to her forehead.
Three months after that Mary was sprawled across their sofa, her head cushioned in John's lap when she asked the question she had meant to pose before.
"John?"
"Yes, love?"
"What if... I mean, what would you do if Sherlock wasn't dead."
"How do you mean?"
"I mean... would you have married me?"
"Well, to be honest, you probably wouldn't have wanted to marry me."
"Why not?"
John ran the tip of his tongue across his bottom lip appraisingly, a gesture which Mary found impossibly endearing.
"Because I was rather... obsessed... with Sherlock."
Mary thought about that for a moment.
"Not that it's a problem or anything but... I thought you said that you weren't attracted to men."
"I'm not."
"Then―"
"I was never sexually attracted to Sherlock."
John sighed, trying to think of the best way to explain his feelings toward that man. He was grateful for Mary's continued silence, she was always more aware of what he needed than he was.
"I was attracted to his mind. His brain. It was hard not to be. He was just... I think you would have liked him Mary. He was impossibly smart. He had the social graces of your average tarantula, but he... I don't know. It just didn't matter."
The house was quiet for a few minutes except for the ticking clock above the mantelpiece.
"If you think I would have liked him, then why do you think I wouldn't have married you?"
"Because I'd always be running off on some case or another. Leaving you, breaking off dates, or just forgetting them all together. I didn't have a steady job except for following him around―"
"But you were happy?"
"Yeah."
Silence.
"Are you happy now?"
"Definitely."
"But you miss it."
"Sometimes."
Mary didn't respond and John felt compelled to explain himself.
"Not very often, and not really very much anymore. Not since I met you. But... It was exciting Mar. I miss that kind of heart-pounding, breath-stopping excitement. The thrill of the chase, getting to see things that nobody else saw, not even to police. He would point out these things, these deductions and they'd feel like magic. But they weren't, they were all facts and observations. It was amazing."
"I wish I'd known him."
"Me too."
"I think I would have married you anyways."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah."
It was six months later when Mary answered the door to a stranger looking for Doctor John Watson. The man had on a black fedora hat from beneath which equally dark curls poked out. He was tall and pale and moved with a kind of grace which made him seem like a dancer. Mary asked how the man knew John and was rewarded with the ambiguous answer "I'm an old friend."
Mary opened the front door a little wider resting her left hand against it to hold it open and suggest that the stranger was not welcome to come in. The man's sharp blue eyes darted from her hand, to the room beyond, to her hair and torso, then back to her face.
"Congratulations." A wry smile twisted at the corner of his lips as he said the word.
"For what?"
"For your marriage and..." He eyes trailed south and Mary flushed to the roots of her hair.
"I haven't even told John yet."
"I imagine he already knows."
"What? How?"
"Well he is a doctor. I imagine he's fairly familiar with the early signs of pregnancy. And he's not an idiot. If he hasn't noticed the way your hand flutters around your abdomen even when you're talking with a stranger, then he is far less intelligent that previously believed. May I come in?"
Mary gawked for a moment.
"Would you like some tea?"
Mary brought out her good tea things. She wasn't sure why, this man just seemed to necessitate them. When she returned with a tray, he was inspecting the pictures on the mantel.
"I'm sorry I wasn't there." He said, nodding to the picture of John and Mary's wedding day.
"Why would you be?"
"I told you I was on of John's oldest friends."
"Yes, but I've never seen you before which leads me to doubt the validity of that statement, and also makes me completely unwilling to leave you alone with my Grandmother's silver."
A small smile quirked up at the side of the man's mouth.
"I can see why he likes you."
"Who are you."
"Strait to the point Mrs. Watson."
Mary took a sip of her tea.
"You trust me enough not to drug your tea." The stranger pointed out.
"I've been sitting right here the whole time."
"But I waved my hand around the sugar bowl suspiciously."
"I don't take sugar in my tea."
That funny little smile made another brief appearance.
"You still trust me. Why?"
"I don't know. It's just a feeling. And... well, I don't know... you seem like the kind of person John would make friends with. Not like John you understand, but... I don't know."
The stranger took a sip of tea which he had loaded more sugar than liquid into.
"Are you..."
The stranger raised an eyebrow.
"No, I'm sorry. I'm just being silly."
"When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."
"That sounds like a fortune cookie."
"I can always predict fortune cookies."
"No you can't."
"Yes, I can."
"Nobody can predict fortune cookies."
"According to whom?"
Mary pressed her lips together in something that was either frustration or elation. She wasn't quite sure which.
"Mary, I'm home." John called as he closed the front door with one shoulder, glancing towards the sitting room and raising two shopping bags slightly before stopping cold.
He opened and closed his mouth several times before the stranger broke the silence.
"Hello John."
"You complete bastard."
"And you say I'm the rude one, at least she offered me tea."
John shook his head in disbelief.
"You're not dead then."
"No, I―" The man began to stand up, setting his tea on the low table before him.
"Sit down!"
"John, I―"
"Sit down Sherlock, or so help me, I'm going to punch you in the nose."
A soft exclamation escaped Mary's lips and the attention of both men snapped towards her.
"Are you alright?" They asked in unison.
Mary pressed her lips together, taking in the disproportionate concern written all over John's features.
"Fine. Be right." She said jovially to the stranger who she had correctly suspected to be the long lost Sherlock Holmes.
She glanced down to his empty tea cup.
"Well I imagine you two have a lot to talk about. Would you like some more tea?"