Johnlock January 2025 #12: Big
Written for prompts posted by @chriscalledmesweetie.
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I can tell he’s had something on his mind all evening. He’s been fidgety, uttering tuneless phrases on his violin, tinkering with an experiment after we put Rosie down for the night. It’s been a few months, and things have become more domestic and routine again, after that first flush of struggling to keep our hands off each other till after her bedtime.
We’re half-burrowed under the duvet in his bed – well, our bed (lucky thing Mr. Posh chose the largest one that would fit in the room without our having to sidle). The light’s been out for a quarter-hour, but he’s shifting around restlessly, making little wordless noises. The walls, bedclothes, even his arm where he's just flung it across my chest are piebald from the oblongs of light cast by the streetlamps through a half-shaded window.
“Might I talk to you about something?” he says finally, into the dim silence. “Something a bit – big.”
“Ta very much,” I say in my best nudge-wink tone, because this feels in advance like something I have to lighten.
“John, I --" He pushes up on one elbow. "You alluded not long ago to a remark of Rosamund’s, shortly after your return to Baker Street, about… our status with respect to one another. A question.”
It takes me a moment to catch up. Sherlock sounds so apprehensive that I wonder what about that conversation is bothering him.
“Right,” I say. “I remember.”
“I fear I enjoyed your discomfiture at the time she asked that question, and that was poor form of me. I know you were thinking about Mary, and – this – I am very bad at this, John, please be patient.” As if that’s not going to wind me up even more. “I have been – so very happy these past months. Happier than I realised it was possible to be. But –”
Oh God, where is he going with this? Afraid I’ve gone off him because we’ve left off snatching every possible chance, like randy teenagers? Worried that I’ll find a woman I fancy more than the most amazing man in all the world? Cold feet? I’ll just have to wait for him to work it up, like Mrs. Turner’s Persian with a hairball.
“I – John, I --" Throat cleared. I think inanely about decongestants. "I would be happier yet if you and I – actually enjoyed the status which Rosamund envisioned for us. I do not expect you to give me your thoughts on this straight away, but I would be gratified if you –”
My mind does something like the frantic scramble that happens when you realise you’ve just driven round a corner the wrong way down a one-way street, and there’s a lorry coming towards you.
“Wait. Wait. Hold up, Sherlock. Did you just – bloody hell, didn’t I say something about you never faffing around – did you just ask me to marry you?”
“I believe – yes.” He sits up, looks a bit frantically about him as if he’s lost something – the plot, possibly – stumbles down, in a clumsy flail of long limbs, to more or less kneel on the rug beside the bed, and grabs my hand.
“Captain John Watson. Ahmmmm.” There must be a life-sized frog in his throat. “I – would wish for nothing more on earth than the honour of becoming your husband John I’m sorry am I making a mess of this –”
“Shut up,” I say, and slip down, not much more gracefully, to shut him up the best way I know how, before he bursts a blood vessel.
“Yes, by the way,” I remember to say into his mouth, eventually.
He pulls back a little. “Yes, I’m making a mess, or –”
“Yes, I’ll marry you, you daft git,” I say, and try not to squeak while he crushes my ribs.
“Come back to bed, Sir Lock,” I manage when I can inhale again, “I’ve -- um -- got something big I want to discuss with you.”
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