AN: Sorry for the delay, guys! I hurt my hand and typing was pretty painful for a couple of days. Also whoops this chapter got really angsty. Sorry for that too. :I
Molly is understandably disappointed when she realizes they're married for good, but, in a moment of surprising practicality, moves on. It turns out that when she is not besotted she is good fun to talk to and very intelligent, and she and John get on well. They get together for coffee sometimes and complain about Sherlock. The only drawback is that she starts seeking John's advice on men and shoes.
The others in their workplace, without Molly's vested interest, take longer to figure out that an annulment is not forthcoming. Sherlock and John—mostly Sherlock, as it is assumed John was coerced—were of course mocked at the time, but there was no single explosive moment of shock as there might have been.
The moment when Sally Donovan figures it out, however, is clear. Sherlock and John are on a case, bent over a body. John's attention is focused on trying not to step in the blood soaking the accounting office's carpet, but Sherlock is expecting Sally's realization and has been watching her with a closeness he normally saves for work or John. He sees the thought form on her face and does not try to stop it.
"You know," she says slowly, in her usual unnecessarily loud voice, "I always had my suspicions about those two." Dull. "But now it comes to it, you never see them kissing or holding hands or anything." Oh, so she had been paying attention! Interesting. "I bet you it's just a scam for the benefits or something."
Inspector Lestrade takes Donovan by the shoulder—not roughly, but it's a bit outside the sphere of professionalism all the same—and turns her toward him. Her expression is startled.
"Sergeant Donovan," he says in a voice much quieter than Sally's but which somehow still can be heard by everyone in the room. "If you can look at those men and tell me they don't mean as much to each other as any romantically involved couple you've ever seen, I will take you myself to the courthouse or wherever the hell you go and help you file against them for tax fraud right now." She looks.
John's smirk is thin and self-conscious, Sherlock's smug. They don't intend to exchange looks, but each tries to sneak a glance at each other at the same time, to try to see what Sally is seeing, and their eyes meet. Each man's smirk gets a little broader and John's looks less nervous. There is what feels like a long pause.
"Yeah, okay," Sally mumbles, and inspector Lestrade releases her shoulder and everyone gets back to what they were doing. John catches a glance at Donovan, and she looks so chastised and humbled that he wonders how they do look, what she saw.
Sherlock doesn't wonder.
Whereas Lestrade understands intuitively and others on the squad pick up hints (that usually just confuse them), Mrs. Hudson, bless her heart, never gets it. Until the end she believes Sherlock and John are as gay as larks. Never mind that they'd have to be exceptionally quietlarks to carry on a physical relationship for so long without her hearing anything of it; still Mrs. Hudson persists.
She delivers tea and advice to whichever remains whenever one of them storms out after one of their "domestics," gives them ostentatious privacy that they appreciate but don't actually need whenever they're having a prescheduled quiet night in, and tuts and worries when John has a night shift at the surgery, until he takes mercy and explains he's not having an affair. John makes one honest effort to explain the truth, just once, long before the wedding. The look she gives him is so reproachful, so I'm-not-angry-I'm just disappointed (presumably for trying to stay closeted to sweet, accepting, all-seeing Mrs. Hudson, of all people) that John feels a little ashamed in spite of it all and excuses himself. He never tries again. After they actually get married, he rather feels he's lost the right to.
And the thing is, it never really matters. Aside from the time a box of condoms showed up in their medicine cabinet and they both spent a week looking askance at each other before figuring out it was Mrs. Hudson who put it there, there was nothing about her assumptions that ever actually made her wrong. Her advice was always just as good as her tea.
"Sherlock needs to be right sometimes, dear," she says to John after Sherlock has swept dramatically out one evening. She pushes a mug of tea comfortingly into John's hands. "Even when he's wrong. My husband was the same way. Sometimes you just have to let the people you love be right."
"We both know he's not," John grouses, sipping the tea disconsolately. "He's only being stubborn."
"Well," says Mrs. Hudson mildly, "if you both know he's wrong, what are you so concerned about? Sounds like you understand each other perfectly well to me."
John feels suddenly a little foolish. "He won't… he won't admit it though," he says, knowing even as he does that it's not the point.
Mrs. Hudson tuts as only Mrs. Hudson can. "And who's being stubborn?" she chides fondly. "Marriage is a thing of give and take. And sometimes," she says again, "you just have to let the one you love be right."
Sherlock comes home that evening with a grocery bag containing an inexplicable bundle of asparagus and a new box of tea they didn't need. John apologizes humbly and Sherlock frowns, but puts the kettle on.
Another time it is Sherlock taking Mrs. Hudson's offered tea, sniffing imperiously as though the tea has done him a disservice.
"I know you're not the most affectionate of people"—only a grunt in reply—"but I do think John feels a bit taken for granted now and then."
"Taken for granted?" Sherlock snorts, as though it's a ridiculous proposition.
"A bit," replies Mrs. Hudson, almost apologetically. Sherlock gives her suggestion a dismissive wave off.
"John is invaluable to me. He knows this."
"Sometimes knowing isn't enough, though," says Mrs. Hudson. "Sometimes even if we know we have to see. John sometimes needs to seethat you care about him."
Sherlock frowns. "Of course I care about him," he says. "I married him, didn't I?"
Mrs. Hudson smiles indulgently. "No, dear," she corrects Sherlock. "He married you."
Three years after they are married, six years after John met their landlady for the first time, eight years after Sherlock dealt with her husband's case in Florida, Mrs. Hudson is diagnosed with cancer. When she mentions her chemotherapy—just by the way, just in passing, as she might comment on the early spring this year—John drops the dish he was washing back in the sink with a splash and a clatter and crosses the kitchen to wrap her in a hug. She accepts it without a word, and they stand there for a long minute, silent, John's dishwatery hands wetting the back of her blouse.
John fetches her from all her chemotherapy appointments even though she insists it isn't necessary. He also buys her fresh flowers every week, bringing them home casually with the groceries, and takes out the old bouquet, never letting them wilt in her vase. Sherlock, for his part, makes her tea sometimes, bringing it downstairs with such a steady hand it doesn't even dribble into the saucer. He scalds it savagely, of course, but she drinks it anyway.
Five months later she is finally hospitalized for symptom control. John goes to visit her almost every other day, and Sherlock tags along; at least that's how it looks to the hospital staff, with John's easy bedside manner—just the right amount of cheerfulness in the right places—and Sherlock's largely unsmiling reticence. They don't realize that this is how he always is, and his sameness comforts Mrs. Hudson better than any platitude could do. If Sherlock has a case he's working on or has just finished he tells her about it, and then he does smile, and she smiles back and tells him it isn't decent.
John continues to bring her flowers. If they're looking a bit droopy he doesn't even let them last a week before replacing them. Sometimes when they get home, John cries while he makes the tea.
Sherlock never cries. John doesn't ask him to.
Mrs. Hudson gets thinner and more tired-looking with every passing day. John takes to holding her hand when they visit, as though trying to tether her to them. One day during a pause in conversation, she gestures Sherlock over. He scoots his chair, which is next to John's, closer to her bed, and Mrs. Hudson holds out her other hand for his.
Sherlock obliges, an eyebrow raised in question. Their landlady just smiles at them both, a proud, maternal smile, and places Sherlock's hand in John's. After only a moment's hesitation, their fingers close around each other's. The conversation moves on, as comfortably as if nothing had happened at all, but Sherlock and John remain with hands clasped, Sherlock's right in John's left, for the rest of the visit.
Just before they leave, as they are standing in the hospital room doorway saying goodbye, Sherlock presses a dry kiss to John's cheek. The smile on Mrs. Hudson's face is so happy, they both wish they had thought of doing something like it long before.
She is gone the next week. A nurse tells them it was quiet and peaceful.
She does not have family left. Sherlock and John are de facto chief mourners at the funeral. John cries, quietly, respectfully, and then again at home on the sofa, even more quietly, shoulders shaking. Sherlock sits next to him, arm around John, and stares dully at the skull on the mantel. He does not cry.
Three days later John is watching telly when Sherlock comes in shuffling uninterestedly through their mail. John doesn't pay much attention until he hears paper hit the ground. He looks up. Most of the mail is scattered on the floor. Sherlock is standing very still, staring at a single opened letter.
"Sherlock?"
He doesn't respond. John comes over and takes the letter gently from his hands. Sherlock lets him and, to John's shock, starts to weep. It is the first time John has ever seen Sherlock cry. He looks at the letter.
It is a legal notice of the last will and testament of Martha Hudson. She has left them 221 Baker Street.