Reader warning: I wrote this ficlet in honor of the lovely afteriwake and hobbitsdoitbetter, two other contributors to this collection who *immediately* glommed on to the angst prompts. It contains angst, some sad Warstan smut, and a trigger warning for suicide. Feel free to close if this is not your cup of tea.
He was tired, that's what it was.
He'd been tired. He was entitled to be tired, he was an old man.
Except, of course, John wasn't. He was thirty eight. He kept right on being thirty-eight, he was very good at that now.
But he was still an old man. It wasn't all that much, individually… a few hours, days, weeks, months, years before he woke up in the bedsit again. But combined? It was the hell of a lot, even as repetitions.
Young-ish body, old man in it.
A month after Baskerville, which was right about when Mary normally broke up with David, John quit his job and applied for a new one over at the practice where she worked, a full year and a half early.
(He waited until she'd split up with David because experimentation had shown that Mary wasn't necessarily monogamous but she was intrinsically faithful, and didn't respond well to advances when she was committed to somebody else.)
Mary liked him right away. She always did, every time, even originally, when he was a bitter, grieving, pseudo-alcoholic. She liked him even more now that he was a charming, successful physician with a cool side gig blogging about his adventures solving crimes.
He asked her on a date. She said yes.
It was one of those rare hot summer days in London when they went on their date, and Mary wore a white halter-top dress and red sandals. They ate a very late brunch, got tiddly on mimosas. She kissed him on the sidewalk and John proposed they go for a walk. So they did, in Hyde Park. He kissed her, then, on the path, a bit slower and sweeter.
A dance school had set up a pop-up tango class in the green space by the Wellington Arch. Mary loved dancing, John hated it, and so the first time they'd gone through this they'd compromised by never dancing at all.
(He acknowledged with hindsight that this made him a shit husband. It went on the list with the rest of the reasons.)
He asked if she wanted to try.
She did.
They were both honestly rubbish at it… there was a reason he loathed dancing. But Mary laughed her way through it and afterwards they kissed, a third time, a good and proper snog with her back pressed up against the trunk of a tree.
"Come back to my flat with me," Mary ordered, without a hint of question or uncertainty in her voice.
They made love in the light of the golden hour just before sunset.
Except, of course, they didn't. One of them did. The other one had an enjoyable and athletic shag with a fun new bloke from her office who she was rather starting to fancy and who knew surprisingly well what got her off.
Twice.
Taking a break for a bottle of wine and a pizza after the first round.
And that was what really got to John, the sense of displacement. Even when he was living some version of his best life, like he was now, nobody was on the same page with him.
His adoptive mum basically thought he was a closeted gay man and a perfect passive subject for her shipping activities.
His best friend in the world, a brother in all but blood, who he'd die for and who would die for him, found him a mildly interesting curiosity.
His wife… God, being inside Mary felt like coming home. Those familiar gentle little sighs, the way her inner walls gripped and fluttered on his cock. He knew her… he knew the nurse, and the assassin, and the mother, and the wife, and even a little bit of the secret dark heart of her that had nothing to do with any of the above.
And Mary didn't know him at all.
But she liked him. She even let him stay the night, after they'd finished.
"Don't go to sleep," John murmured into the back of her neck.
"Mmmm," Mary replied sleepily, "Why not?"
"Because," he said, and he didn't have a really good reason, he never normally knew when the reset would take place, he just had a terrible suspicion, "You never know what might happen."
"Yes. I might awaken in the night and take sinful advantage of you again," Mary laughed quietly, "The horror. Go'sleep. I'll cook you breakfast in the morning."
John did. He'd have to eventually, and in Mary's bed, with the scent of fabric softener and Claire de la Lune and sex around him, was the best place he could think of to do it.
With absolutely no sense of surprise, John woke up in on a lumpy mattress, smelling the smell of sweat and Scotch and the memory of other people's dinners.
He was so tired.
With effort, he pulled himself out of bed and over to the battered writing desk that was one of the few cheap pieces of furniture that had come with the tiny flat. Opening the drawer, he pulled his laptop out, set it on the top.
His service pistol was in there. It always had been. And maybe this was what it had been waiting for the entire time. He couldn't remember when it hadn't at least been a possibility for him… sometimes near, sometimes distant, but never quite gone.
John reached in and picked out the gun, feeling the heavy, almost comforting weight of it on his palm.
He'd gone through enough attempts. It was time to end the cycle.
Note: If you are interested in reading or writing any fics in this AU, mosey on over to AO3 and search for the John Watson's Groundhog Days collection. All ratings, subjects, ships, and people are welcome!