My first fic for this fandom. We'll see if inspiration strikes again.
"If I recall correctly, there was a year when we were nineteen that every other word out of your mouth was 'marry me.'"
"Marry me."
"No."
"What do you mean 'no'?" He got up from his kneeling position and let the bouquet of red flowers in his bandaged hand drop to his side.
"I won't marry you," she replied. Placing her hands on her hips, enhanced by the frill of her uncharacteristically lovely blue dress, she went on, "There would be no point."
He rolled his eyes at the familiar sentiment he had heard many times before from the youngest Holmes.
"We love each other," he explained, because they did. If he didn't know anything else, he knew that much.
"Well, of course we do, Tewky. What does that have to do with anything?"
"Enola, that is the entire point of marriage: to be together forever."
"Oh, we will be. You know that," she assured with a dismissing swat of her hand. "Now hurry up. The next lead is all the way in Southampton."
Forgive him for being easily appeased, but her promise of forever and her warm hand clasped in his to drag him out of apartment 221B was enough for him to drop the matter for about a month.
"Marry me."
"Don't be ridiculous, Tewkesbury! We're being shot at!"
She quickly dragged him around a corner as a bullet whizzed past his ear and into a rowdy pub, celebrating the entry of a new progressive lord into the House of Lords, a fast friend to Tewkesbury himself.
She led him over to a dark corner and paid a man to switch jackets with him. The door burst open just as their pursuer walked into the pub, but Enola was too clever and pulled the viscount over her, pinning herself against the wall.
"I love you," he said into her ear, placing one hand on her hip and the other on the wall beside her head. It was a situation they had play-acted many times before in circumstances just as dire as these, but the words were always true.
When he pulled back to look at her face, it was a soft pink that made his stomach twist.
"I love you too," she said softly as her hands slid from his shoulders into his hair. "Here they come."
He bit back a smile as he buried his face in her neck, imagining the day when their play-acting could be as true as their words.
"Marry me."
"Stop talking. I'm trying to hear them."
He smiled down at her as he spun her around the ballroom, following closely the Earl of Scarborough and the Lady in his arms. Enola looked gorgeous as always in an aggressively chartreuse gown that exposed both her shoulders and her lovely collarbones. The center of the gown was embroidered with yellow heathers. Her dark eyes were sharp and cold as she listened closely to their conversation. He wanted to marry her.
She groaned aloud as the pair split up and reconvened at the entry to the private chambers of the hostess. The lady went in and the earl waited.
"Now we'll have to wait till she comes back out," she complained. He spun her as a distraction before drawing her back into his arms.
"If we were married, you could join the ladies in the private chamber and just ask her yourself. That is only one of the luxuries the title of Marchioness would afford you."
She looked to be considering it, but then the song ended and the lady came back out. Before Enola could go chase down her next clue, he lifted her gloved hand to his lips and kissed her there. Her eyes softened for a second and she smiled at him, cupping his cheek with her hand.
"I don't need your title, Tewky," she said in a soft tone she rarely used when they were in public. "I just need you."
He turned his face to kiss the inside of her wrist and she gasped, dark eyes fixed on his lips. Her pretty lips parted to say something and then she disappeared into the crowd, off on her next adventure. Wedding bells in his head drowned out the music of the next song starting up.
"Marry me."
"What?"
Her eyes were cloudy and unfocused. Tears filled his eyes as he pressed his balled-up shirt against her gushing stomach wound. There was blood all over her bedroom, which he'd only been in twice before, and all over his hands and his undershirt. He'd carried her there, yelling for the landlady to get help and crying like a baby.
"Please marry me."
"Oh, Tewky," she says, hands reaching up to cradle his face. "The doctor will be here soon. Don't cry."
"Please marry me." He rested his forehead against hers as he hovered over her body.
"We're already married in every way that matters."
"Please, Enola," he begged, pressing kisses to her cold and clammy forehead. "I don't know what I'd do without you."
"You'll never have to know," she promised, tilting her head up to kiss him gently. He sobbed loudly and pressed harder, willing the blood to stop by the sheer magnitude of his love for her. "You know that I've survived worse."
"I love you so much, Enola." Her face was ashen and her hands were cold where they still held his jaw.
"I love you so much more, you useless boy."
She kissed him again and then the doctor burst in with her brother in tow. Sherlock had to pull the viscount off of her body, wailing like a banshee, and hold him as his body wracked with sobs. He didn't leave her room for three days after that, sleeping on the floor beside her bed.
"Marry me."
"Why, hello, Tewkesbury. It's nice to see you too."
He grinned at her as she turned to survey the stuffy dinner party they had both been roped into by Mycroft trying to showcase his connections.
"I'm serious, Enola. Marry me. It's the least you could do after getting me stuck at this horrid dinner."
"Oh, please," she scoffed, circling the room as he dutifully followed. Her dress today was lavender and adorned with silver threads spreading like ivy up the skirt and around her bodice. She looked much more delicate than he knew her to be. She continued, "If anything, you owe me an apology. Mycroft only made me come because he knew you wouldn't show up otherwise."
"It's not my fault that all of London knows I'm completely and totally in love with you."
She smiled a little to herself as she scanned the people in the room, but then her gaze turned steely.
"Apparently not all of London."
He followed her glare to a pair of ladies around their age, giggling and looking at them. More specifically, looking at him.
"Unfortunately, as long as I'm unmarried, I'll be considered a bachelor," he said. "You could change that though."
"I don't mind," she lied, gripping his hand in hers, and he couldn't contain his glee.
The rest of the dinner was uneventful, but Enola held his hand beneath the table through the whole thing.
"Are you sure you won't marry me?" he leaned over to ask at the end of the dinner when all the food had gone and the polite conversation had turned to riotous laughter.
"There's no point," she said, daring to lift his hand and kiss his knuckles before dropping their entwined fingers back under the table. "I'm already yours and you're already mine."
He couldn't really find it in himself to argue.
"Marry me."
"Of course not."
She was out of breath and red in the face, hair a mess from where his hands had been tangled in it. She was dressed like a boy again, trouser-clad legs straddling his hips in the carriage they were taking to Wales. Her lips were red and swollen and he could guess that his were too.
"This is getting to be a little ridiculous, Enola." His hands squeezed her hips as he sat up a little straighter beneath her. "Only married couples should be doing this."
"May I kindly remind you, Viscount Tewkesbury, Marquess of Basilwether, that I do whatever I damn well please, which includes kissing you senseless."
He smiled at her and pressed another kiss to her lips before pulling away to watch the foggy way she blinked her eyes back open, those hawk eyes that saw everything.
"And I do love kissing you," he insisted, "but I would love it even more if we were married."
"Now you're the one being utterly ridiculous," she said. "What's the point of being married if we're already perfect together as we are?"
"Well…" he began, face heating up as he tried to think of a reason other than the lewd one that first popped into his head. "We would live in the same house and eat all our meals together."
"I don't want to watch you eat, Tewky," she said, twisting her face adorably.
He laughed and said, "Alright, well, we could love each other publically with no fear of repercussions, from your brother or anyone else."
"I hardly care what Mycroft or anyone else thinks," she said. She lightly brushed his sweaty hair off his forehead before adding, "And anything I do, I do it loving you, in public or not."
His heart throbbed in his chest and he wanted to- he wanted to do a lot.
"There's more, Enola," he said, only noticing afterward how deep and rough his voice had gotten. Something roared in the pit of himself, roared for her. "Married couples can do more."
She was quiet and still. He felt the shiver down her spine and was sure she could sense what he meant, even if no one had ever taught her. She asked, voice barely above a whisper, "What more?"
He was hyper-aware of the weight of her over him, the taste of her tongue lingering in his mouth. He wet his lips and she tracked the movement with her eyes as he thought of a response. Before he could, the carriage came to an abrupt stop that had her tumbling off his lap.
"Right. We're here. Let's go, Tewkesbury."
He hopped out of the carriage, uncomfortable and glowing as he helped her out. She tucked her wild hair back into her cap. This girl would be the death of him.
"Marry me."
"Hmm?"
He looked up from his book to where she was seated above him on the couch, hand tangled in his hair. She was wearing another one of her bohemian dresses, probably the first dress of its kind to ever enter Basilwether Hall, and she looked beautiful.
"I'm asking you to marry me," she repeated, making his heart skip a beat as he processed her words. "If you'd like."
"If I'd like?" he mimicked, trying to make sense of what was happening. He put his book aside and turned around where he sat to kneel between her legs, scanning her face for any hint of jest or ruse. Then he surveyed the windows and doorways to see if there was anyone watching for whom she felt she had to put on a show. No jest, no ruse, no person hiding in the rafters. "Well, of course, yes. I'm not entirely an idiot."
She smiled proudly and balanced her elbows on her knees to cup his face and kiss him. And Viscount Tewkesbury, Marquess of Basilwether could finally die happy. Not that Enola would ever let him die, of course.
"My plan worked, did it not?"
"I believe in the end it was my plan that worked. As per usual."
Nerds. This fic was entirely too romantic. Anyway, let me know if you liked it or if they were in character. Every comment counts!
Oh and tell me what your favorite proposal was!
