The French, for whatever reason, have a lot of good phrases for this sort of moment.
Post-coital tristesse.
Nostalgie de la boue.
All sorts of lovely phrases that don't quite express the desired sentiment, which is that it's an absolute bloody shame for a couple to be so masterful at that one aspect of love and so completely pants at literally everything else about it that matters.
After a quiet but extended and athletic shag, which was brilliant, as it always is with John, I'd nodded off. In his bedroom, in Sherlock Holmes's palatial house, I slept like a baby, and didn't wake until sunlight crossed over my face.
John was staring at the ceiling. He'd put on a t-shirt and shorts… I remembered that, all of a sudden. He never liked to sleep naked. It made him uncomfortable.
I personally didn't mind it, but I figured it was probably time for me to get back to my own room before the rest of the house woke up. So I sat up on my elbows and started looking for my underwear.
"Do you still hate me?" he asked quietly, looking at the cracked plaster above him, "For… everything. How we ended up."
I raised my eyebrows and thought about it as I pulled my knickers back on.
"No. I mean, if you'd asked me about it sixteen years ago when I was broke and lonely and pregnant and scared…" I bit down on my lip and smiled in lieu of crying, "But you and I are from a very long time ago. No, I don't hate you. Do you hate me?"
"I don't think I ever did. I was just… so pissed off at you. For such a long time."
My bra had landed on the lamp at the far corner, so I put it on and picked up my camisole.
"So," said I, with a false cheeriness, "Elephant in the room, huh?"
I waggled my own bare left hand at him, and said, "You're married."
John sat up, blushed, and said, "Um. Yeah. Yeah I am. Though obviously things aren't going so well for us just at the moment."
Shirted, I sat next to him, and said, as the person who he had just slept with, "Kinda got that, yeah. There wasn't much of a feminine touch at the house. What's she like?"
"Brilliant. Beautiful. Mad," John chuckled ruefully, "Probably the great love of my life, and I've fucked it up."
"What's her name?" I asked.
John scrubbed his hands over his face, and said, "Look, I know it's actually Rosamund and you haven't used it in years. But in my head, it's always going to be Mary-"
I sprung back to my feet, and said, "Wait, what? Back the fuck up. You were talking about me?"
John frowned, and pointed at the ring on his hand.
"That's not our wedding band!"
"Um… yeah, it is."
"Look at the inscription, John."
John worked the ring off his finger and peered at the inside and said, "Oh, shit."
"Yeah."
"Okay, I think I know what happened here. Sherlock and I had infiltrated an illegal gambling ring involved in human trafficking and it was the final hand and I was tapped out and needed to go all in and there must have been another married man at the table and we had to leave in kind of a hurry-"
"John-"
"Look, Mary, Sherlock was going to die and-"
"I do not care that you lost a two hundred quid wedding ring, I care that in your mind apparently you and I have been in a monogamous relationship for the last sixteen years!" Then I lowered the volume of my voice, because I was getting rather shrill.
John, unbelievably, looked guilty at this.
"I wouldn't say… monogamous, exactly."
"You amaze me."
"I dated Sherlock's sister for six months, for example," he volunteered.
I frowned.
"He has a sister?"
"Oh, that's right, you missed all of that. That was-" he scratched his head, "That was batshit, if you want to know the truth."
"John, I sent you a lawyer," I said desperately.
He scowled, and said, "I'd actually forgot about that. That was a real cute stunt. What the hell possessed you?"
"I was trying to be nice," I hissed.
I hadn't missed these sorts of rows.
John drew a breath, and smiled a bit tentatively at me.
"So… all that stuff. Just now. You thought… you thought that was you and me…. having an affair."
I folded my arms, taken even more off kilter.
"I mean…"
"You homewrecking slag," he commented mildly.
"Oh fuck off, I wasn't homewrecking. It was a lovely and sentimental send-off to a part of our lives that was deep and meaningful, and it provided closure and completion."
John blinked like a cat, and finally said, "Okay, men and women look at the same situations very differently."
We sat in stillness, until he said, "You remember exactly what our entirely commonplace wedding rings looked like."
"And I could probably pick your penis out of an identity parade too. It's how my brain works. Shut up."
"I have always believed," John said carefully, "That I was entitled to get a divorce or an annulment. It was well within my rights. But then I never met any other women who I thought could lace your shoes up, and so I never bothered. It's just paperwork."
He laughed, unexpectedly.
"The closest competition you ever had was Eurus Holmes, if you can believe it. And then she turned out to be a serial killer who tried to drown me, so…"
There was… I was really curious about that whole story, all of a sudden.
But instead I laughed semi-hysterically and said, "Oh, God, John… what the hell are we going to do?"
The answer to this question came in the form of a quiet tap at the bedroom door. Rosie popped her head around, and said, "Hi, Dad. Sir. I'm kind of hungr-"
She stopped dead when she saw me.
And the deshabille we were in.
Her perfect little face crumpled almost instantly, and she hiccuped, "You wanted her, you didn't want me. That's what happened, isn't it?"
