A/N: TRIGGER WARNING FOR SELF HARM
Written for a prompt on the shkinkmeme summarised as;
"Holmes moves in and lives with Mary and Watson but it can really test their patience at times. He leaves his experiments everywhere in the household, tags along whenever Watson and Mary want to go out to a quiet dinner date alone, and sometimes walks in on them while they're making love (to tell Watson there's a case, not because he's a voyeur).
At times when Mary really feels fed up and decides to kick out Holmes, she catches glimpse of how depressed and lonely Holmes really is."
It's also slightly AU in that it doesn't really fit in with the GOS canon.
It had been exactly 3 months, 2 weeks and 4 days since the marriage of John Watson and Mary Mortsan. It had been exactly 2 months, 3 weeks and 6 days since the arrival of Sherlock Holmes into their household, which, funnily enough, was also the exact amount of time which had passed since Mary Watson née Mortsan had began to hate his very presence in her home.
Holmes hadn't been invited; he had simply shown up one day and never left. Technically, he still lived at 221B Baker Street, but he hadn't spent more than three consecutive hours in the place since his impromptu arrival at the Watsons' door nearly three months previously. He hadn't brought with him any luggage; not even a change of clothes or a nightshirt, seemingly content to just take Watson's belongings, which he invariably never returned.
It had been around 6 in the evening when he first appeared, and Mary had served up dinner for herself and her husband only a few minutes beforehand. A series of frantic bangings at the door signalled his arrival, at which Watson jumped from his seat and rushed into the hallway with a muttered "Holmes…". Mary had sighed, but held her tongue; all too familiar with her husband's unswerving loyalty to the detective. It would be pointless to say anything.
Holmes had positively bounced into the kitchen, grinning cheerily at Mary and helping himself to a piece of bread from Watson's plate, all the while rambling about some experiment or other and gesturing wildly, his actions further cementing the idea in Mary's mind that he was entirely mad.
Watson threw his wife a pained look. "Do you mind terribly if I take my meal into the other room, darling? It's just Holmes here wants my help with a case, even though our partnership officially ended 3 months ago." The last was accompanied by a glare at the detective, who either didn't notice or chose to pretend he hadn't. Knowing the man's conniving ways, Mary assumed it was the latter.
There was no use saying no; Holmes was clearly in one of those moods. Just slightly too enthusiastic, with that strange air of desperation which always put her in mind of a man teetering at the edge of a cliff. He had been abusing some kind of substance; that much was obvious.
"Of course, dear." It would be another meal eaten alone this evening.
"The sooner we deal with it, the sooner he'll be off, eh old chap?" Watson said jovially, slapping Holmes' back with just a touch more force than was strictly friendly, then steering him out of the kitchen, leaving Mary alone at the table set for two.
Since then, Sherlock Holmes had been a regular fixture in the Watson household.
On more than one occasion, Mary and John had tried to persuade him to leave, but he was adamant that he was on the very edge of a major scientific breakthrough, and to leave now, in the crucial stages of his experiment, would be akin to throwing the last few months into the gutter. The "experiment" in question referred, Mary assumed, to the jumbled paraphernalia which had appeared one morning, and now resided on the little table in the kitchen. Although, seeing as Holmes' equipment was mainly pilfered crockery and decomposing foodstuffs pinched from the cupboards, she found it difficult to believe there would be any discovery other than an infestation of vermin in their once spotless home.
Any attempt to clean away the mess had resulted in Holmes becoming incensed and branding the offender a fool, a blithering idiot, or some other such degrading term. This hadn't bothered Mary unduly; she had come to expect this kind of insulting behaviour from the detective. What her husband saw in him was beyond her, although she had noted that his response when Watson displeased him was much less virulent.
If anything, Holmes seemed to relish the moments when he held the doctor's full attention. He was forever trying to involve Watson on his cases, no matter how mundane and simple the majority of them were nowadays. This behaviour had tailed off in recent weeks, though, and indeed Holmes hadn't mentioned any detective work at all in the last fortnight, preferring to spend his hours sitting in a chair pulled up to the little table, fixated on the spoiling food in front of him, although Mary personally didn't believe he was really looking at his pitiful experiment at all.
2 months, 3 weeks and 6 days after the arrival of Sherlock Holmes into their household was when Mary, trying her best to clean around the mess Holmes had left scattered through her home, finally lost her last shred of patience with the man. She was expected to sit idly by whilst that maniac tore through her and Watson's
residence, rifling through her possessions without an once of respect for her privacy. Her husband might tolerate this behaviour, but by God, she wasn't going to.
She marched into the lounge - where he had set up a kind of den on the floor with blankets taken from the bedroom - without bothering to knock, with a mind to send the lunatic detective back to his own home once and for all.
"Sherlock Holmes!" she cried as she entered the room. "Enough is en-" She stopped abrubtly, eyes wide as she took in the sight before her.
Holmes was crouched on the carpet in the centre of the room, his back to the door, hunched in on himself as he hugged his left arm to his chest. He had started when the door opened, and now fixed her with wide, terrified eyes, still cowering on the floor.
She took a step towards him. "Holmes…?"
He flinched, then, with some supreme effort, straightened his back a little. "I did not believe you would be coming in to clean here."
"No, I wasn't going to, I-" she frowned. "That doesn't matter, Holmes. What's wrong with you?"
"It doesn't concern you, Mary. I assure you, I'll clean… I'll clean everything up," he replied, his words sounding curiously strangled.
Confused, she crossed the short space remaining between them, kneeling by the detective's side. The arm he had been pressing into his chest was leaking trails of blood from three deep parallel gashes, and a straight razor lay on the blanket by his knees, its blade dull with partially dry blood. Mary's breath caught in her throat. So this was what the man had been trying to hide from her.
The pair had made no secret of their dislike for one another, but all of a sudden, Holmes wasn't the arrogant, irritable, downright dislikeable man he usually was. Seeing him sitting there, huddled on the floor, Mary caught a glimpse ofhow vulnerable, how human he really was behind all the bravado.
She reached out, laying one hand on top of his own, and pulled him close with the other, entangling her fingers in his hair as he crumpled into her, burying his face against her neck and sobbing, his whole body bucking as he fought to draw in air between the cries. He clutched her hand tight, tighter than was strictly comfortable, but she said nothing, squeezing back as he held on to her like she was the only thing left in the world.
Eventually his hysterics faded, and he stilled, giving only the occasional hiccupping sob. Mary drew back from him, still holding onto his hand, and pulled him to his feet.
"Let's get you cleaned up, Holmes," she said quietly, leading him into the kitchen where she sat him at the table and sponged his wounds with a warm wet cloth. She worked in silence, all too aware of Holmes' curious eyes burning into her.
When the wounds were cleaned and dressed, she fetched a clean shirt of her husband's and brought it to Holmes.
"You've stolen enough of his clothing as it is, I'm sure he won't notice one more," she said with a timid smile as she proffered the garment to him.
She averted her eyes as he unbuttoned his shirt, but she couldn't help but notice how much his hands were shaking as he fought to redress himself.
"Let me." She crouched in front of the detective, helping him do up the buttons. When it was finished she straightened swiftly, feeling a sudden embarrassment flooding her.
"Why?" Holmes said, so softly she wondered whether she had imagined it. But he was staring at her again, those clever eyes trying to work out her motives.
She opened her mouth to speak, then realised she had no words. "You're John's friend," she finally decided on.
Holmes flinched again, then looked away, suddenly very interested in the bowl of rotting apples sitting beside him. She crouched to her knees again and grasped his good hand in both of her own. "I know you care about him, Sherlock. He's a good man. And I'm not trying to take him from you."
Holmes sniffed, his lip curling momentarily as he tried to fight back the tears. Mary continued, squeezing his hand.
"Sherlock, I could never take him from you, even if I wanted to. He cares about you too much." She paused, comprehension dawning. You do realise that, don't you?"
One look at the man told her he had not. She gave him a fond smile. "And you call yourself a detective."
He smiled back, briefly catching her eyes before looking away again. She followed his gaze to the table.
"There never was any experiment, was there?"
He smiled more broadly this time. "No."
He rose to leave, but paused in the doorway, turning back to Mary, who was still standing by the little table.
"I trust you won't tell Watson about any of this… business?"
She shook her head.
"Not if you don't want me to, Sherlock."
He dipped his head curtly, turning to leave before whipping back round again and adding, as if as an afterthought; "Thank you, Mary. For everything."
She simply nodded back in reply.
It wasn't until the door had slammed shut and Holmes had well and truly left the house that Mary realised the front of her dress was stained with the detective's blood. She shook her head to clear her thoughts before hurrying out of the room to clear up the evidence of Holmes' secret.
Holmes returned to the house a few hours later with a bundle of new shirts tucked under his arm, which he offered to Mary, who had by this point managed to clear the house of most of the detective's clutter. She thanked him, then the pair stood, awkwardly, at a loss for words, before Holmes gave a shy, very un-Holmes-like smile and bounded off upstairs, no doubt to create new mess.
When Watson returned from his house calls at dinner time, it was with some satisfaction that he noted his best friend and his wife were not at each other's throats for once. It had always pained him that the two people he cared for most in this world cared not one jolt about each other, but perhaps this signified some change for the better. He dearly hoped so.