Second verse, same as the first, a little bit louder and a little bit worse.
Except it was a lot worse because the second evening's attempt at getting engaged ended up with Mary in an overcrowded ED trying to force John to put his oxygen mask back on his face. He was stoned and confused and also, oh yes, in bronchospasm from smoke inhalation and thus convinced he was going to die.
"No, no," he said, in between terrifying whooping gasps for air, "If… if I don't make it... I want us to be…"
"Jesus," Mary said, pushing his hands away from his face and holding the mask in position, "You're going to live, I love you, we'll get married whenever you want. No more proposals. They're bad luck. Now just breathe, okay? Please."
He looked at her with mute gratitude, though that probably had a lot to do with the fact that the albuterol he'd got in the ambulance had finally kicked in and some oxygen was making it back to his brain. His lips were still blue .
The next night he nearly got himself blown up in an abandoned underground line beneath Parliament, and Mary began thinking that she needed to get rid of Sherlock Holmes for John's sake even more than she did for her own. But in that irritating way that men have with their friendships ("Oh, you also enjoy playing golf? Clearly you must be my hetero lifemate and we'll hang around for the next forty years during which we will never express any emotions more complex than "thirsty" to one another."), Sherlock and John had gone entirely back to their own bizarre version of normal. Being almost blown up, she guessed, was their version of hugging it out.
Men, she knew, tended to drop the undesirable acquaintances of their bachelor years after they settled down… or at least, a lot of her male friends had disappeared from her life once they'd got married. Mary just wasn't quite sure how this was accomplished. Apparently she'd skipped that particular feminine wiles lecture.
Mary regretted the necessity. She actually did like Sherlock, for some reason, yet another in her life-long series of irreversible snap judgements. She always had a weakness for dickheads, being herself one of a long line of them. And seeing the two of them together had given her the unpleasant realization that John… really didn't have any other friends. Plenty of friendlies, certainly, but there were no Janines or Caths in his life where he had any sort of emotional connections. Aside from Sherlock, all he had was her, actually. Given the level of deception that was an inevitable part of her life, she wondered if that could really be enough for someone.
She kept her head down over the next few weeks, trying to see any cracks in the friendship where a wedge could be inserted, and trying to be, intensively, Mary. This was rather unpleasant. For at least a year now she'd almost exclusively just been able to be herself, and she disliked the reminder that she'd started off by faking it.
But she was good at this, none better. So she was only somewhat alarmed when she got a text from an unknown number two weeks after Sherlock's return.
-We need to talk. Coffee shop by your office, five o'clock. Come alone. -SH
Only somewhat. Because even two weeks in Mary had noticed that Sherlock had a strong tendency towards the theatrical and she suspected that this melodramatic text was just an example of same. As in fact, it turned out to be. He ordered and paid for their drinks (tall vanilla latte for her, quad espresso with eight sugars which she hadn't even known was a drink you could get but explained so much for him). Sherlock then tented his fingers in front of his face and began with, "Would you like to help me and John break into Chris Jennings' office?"
"The client's husband from this morning? Why…" she asked, slowly, "Would I like to do that?"
"To find evidence he's having an affair."
"I meant why would I like to do that."
"Ah. Oh!" He blinked at her twice and said, uncertainly, "Because it's important that husbands and wives share mutual interests and activities?"
"Is this a test?" she asked.
"No!" he said, seeming alarmed, "Not at all. The test was when you helped me hijack a motorcycle. And you passed! Full marks, Mary."
"Well, then, I do want to have mutual interests and activities with John. That's why I have learned to understand and comment intelligently on test cricket. Breaking and entering is a bit beyond the call of duty."
Sherlock smiled wolfishly at her. Was he… trying to charm her? "Yes, but unlike sitting through cricket with him this is not so tedious that you will actively contemplate suicide during the activity."
Mary giggled, despite herself, at that. He continued on, "It's in a very good cause, as you know. And like almost all the work I do with John it's really quite safe."
Oh my God, Mary thought, He's trying to ingratiate himself with me. He wanted her to like him and think that he was a safe companion for her husband-to-be. And if he was trying to be friends with her, that actually meant… well, she might actually be able to get away with it.
Again.
"Yeah, all right then," she said, surprising herself.
"Brilliant!" he exclaimed, shotgunning his caffeine-and-sugar bomb and standing up, "We'll plan on ten o'clock tonight. Wear black, and comfortable shoes. And you'll need to make it look like it was your idea."
"Beg pardon?"
"He's much less likely to shout at you," he said, over his shoulder as he left the coffee shop.
Mary sat alone at the table for two and took her first sip of coffee, feeling dazed. Talking with Sherlock was like having a conversation with a tornado. But she did insist on going along with the two of them that night, and she did make it seem like it was her idea.
Breaking into Christopher Jennings' office was more fun than she thought she could have with her clothes on. She had missed all this cloak-and-dagger sort of thing. She was intrigued to see that Sherlock was extremely good with lockpicks, an art form she'd never quite mastered to her own satisfaction. Mostly she'd focused on getting into places by being the sort of person that was necessary but unobtrusive in that place. That's why she'd first studied nursing, actually. Everyone needs nurses sometimes, but nobody ever really notices them.
John, in contrast to his friend, didn't pay nearly enough attention to where he left his fingerprints, and she barely managed to suppress a "Hands in pockets" long enough for Sherlock to notice and say it for her.
This became her life. She'd go to work, she'd come home, she'd fix dinner… except now in the background there were a whole lot of really interesting and ridiculous crimes to be solved. Her fiance had a legitimate claim on being emotionally healthy for the first time since she'd met him. She had a goofy oversized new friend whose conversations were limited to things like exotic forms of poisoning, although he really did actually know a lot of fascinating information on the subject.
It was weird. It was glorious.
And if Mary couldn't quite suppress just a hint of self-satisfaction that she had managed to slip ghosting , the cheapest and lamest form of setting up a false identity, past a professional detective who routinely described his brain as some form of powerful engine, well…. a small daily dose of vitamin smug was probably good for her. She'd been the best, once, and it was nice to know that she'd stayed that way.
Notes: The case that John, Mary, and Sherlock go on is not my invention... it's part of the extra content in johnwatsonblog. co .uk. The entry in question is marked "3rd june" and titled "Happily Ever After." I don't generally consider the blogs canonical since they screw up my mental timelines even worse than the show does on its own, but this entry fit into the story I wanted to tell so I said "whatever."