As John bit into his slice of pizza, he instantly felt better. As anxious as he was about finally moving out of 221B, spending time with Mary was more than enough to make him forget his worries.
Just looking into her heavy-lidded blue eyes made him damn near forget the trials of the past couple years.
"See? You're smiling already. I told you pizza was the cure," Mary intoned with a professional air.
John's smile grew as he murmured around a mouthful of pizza, "Thanks, Doctor Morstan."
"You don't have to be quite so sarcastic about it, Doctor Watson," Mary sing-songed. "I was right, wasn't I?"
"Yes, you were," John admitted, chuckling derisively as Mary bit into her own slice of pizza, only to have the cheese stretch and stretch and stretch, forcing her to eat in a very ungraceful fashion. By the time she'd managed to maneuver all the dangling cheese into her mouth, she had tomato sauce and olive oil smeared all over her lips.
"Really, Mary, I was feeling fine already. You didn't have to put on a show."
"Piss off," she replied bitterly, her twinkling eyes betraying her amusement despite her attempt at stoicism.
John leaned across the table and pressed his lips to hers, and he felt the corners of her mouth turn up.
As he pulled away, he made a show of licking his lips to rid them of the sauce he'd just contracted from Mary. "Oh, that's tasty," he joked.
"I'm really starting to think you should give up this whole medicine thing. Comedy appears to be your true calling."
"Ha, ha, very funny," John said sardonically.
"Yes, you are. A funny little man, that's my John," Mary smirked, dabbing at her chin with her napkin.
"I'm not little!" John protested.
"Keep telling yourself that, love." Mary tucked her napkin away and took a sip of water. "Oh," she said, her facial expression shifting dramatically from distant amusement to concern. "You never said what was bothering you earlier. Something at work?"
John's eyes widened momentarily as he realized where this conversation would ultimately lead him. "No, no, work's fine."
"Have you had a row with one of your friends?"
"No."
"What, then?" Mary said, moving to take another sip of water but stopping before the glass reached her lips. Her brow wrinkled in concern. "The nightmares haven't come back, have they?"
John's throat tightened at the mere thought of the nightmares. As a matter of fact, the nightmares were back, although he had no intention of telling her that. Ever since he'd started thinking about moving out of 221 B, Sherlock had haunted his dreams with a frequency that was almost foreign to John. Why, the nightmares hadn't been this frequent since Sherlock –
He couldn't even think it.
The nightmares were never the same; there was always some fresh hell awaiting John when he closed his eyes. Sometimes he saw…him…dead, dead in a thousand different cruel ways. Sometimes he saw him standing calmly over the broken body of some faceless person, blood-spattered but grinning toothily.
Those were the worst dreams. Those were the ones that made his voice ring throughout John's unconscious brain.
"It's all true. Everything they said about me. I invented Moriarty…I'm a Fake…The newspapers were right all along…tell anyone who will listen to you that I invented Moriarty for my own purposes."
That was the heart of John's problems: the knowledge that their friendship hadn't been built on lies. It couldn't have been. Moriarty was real.
But what if he wasn't?
What if John was just some naïve idiot who had been too obtuse to notice that his best friend was a murdering psychopath? He had always told John that he saw but did not observe. Maybe he'd been trying to tell John something? Maybe the whole time, he'd been hoping John would finally realize what had really been going on.
No, that was absurd.
John sighed. He remembered the first time he'd met Mycroft, when he'd been told, "You're not haunted by the war, Dr. Watson. You miss it." There was a time when that had been true, and he'd thrown himself into a new, exciting war, but now John could only laugh at the irony of it all. He'd survived Afghanistan! He'd seen more bloodshed than most people had a right to ever see, had pulled shrapnel from gaping wounds, had extracted bullets from lost causes to give them false hope, had himself been shot; but one fucking body lying cold on the sidewalk and –
John could no longer say he wasn't haunted by the war.
He shook himself from his reverie and remembered that Mary had asked him a question.
"No, no, that's not it," he said weakly. He swallowed. "Not the nightmares."
Mary raised an eyebrow at him, clearly not believing a word he said, but didn't pry. "What is it, then? Something's got you shaken."
John took a deep breath. "I've decided to move out of my flat."
Mary's eyes widened. "You're giving up Baker Street?! You're living in a flat on the posh side of central London for a fraction of the price anyone else would be paying, and you're moving?"
"It's more complicated than that."
"Obviously, it must be, because I sure as hell don't see the problem," she said, moving to take another bite of pizza but stopping before it got to her mouth. "Unless this is about Sherlock." Her face was the picture of concern.
John felt himself flinch visibly. "Sorry, I shouldn't have said anything," Mary murmured soothingly, putting her pizza down.
"No! No, it's alright," John said haltingly. "It is part of the reason."
Mary smiled sadly. "John, I promise I'll only say this once, but it's okay that it still bothers you. In fact, I'd be shocked if it didn't still bother you. Your best friend killed himself " – John cringed – "and that's not something that will scar over easily. I know that it's been two years, and I know that you think that means it's been long enough for you to have come to terms with it, but that's bullshit. I know you have this weird thing about showing people that you have emotions, but you're allowed to sad. I just need to know that you know that."
John looked down at his plate and bit his lip to keep himself from smiling like an idiot. He closed his eyes and chuckled silently to himself for a moment.
"What's so funny?" Mary asked indignantly.
John looked up and met Mary's eyes.
"Marry me."
Mary's mouth shut with a sharp click and her eyes widened. "What," she said flatly, not exactly a question but not exactly a statement.
John fished in his pocket for the tiny velvet box that he'd been carrying around for so long. "I'm serious," he said, opening the box and sliding it across the table. "Mary, will you marry me?"
Mary clapped her hands over her mouth as she looked down at the ring, her breathing shallow. She gingerly reached for the box and plucked the ring from its cushion. She pushed it slowly onto her left ring finger.
"You have to ask?"
John finally gave up trying to stifle his smile and let it split his face. He leaned across the table once more and kissed Mary deeply, only pulling away when he desperately needed air.
"Oh my god," he said, breathing hard and grinning like a madman. "We're getting married."