#do-over

I was looking through my files looking for a meme I made, only to realize I never posted my collection of memes for Faceless (Do-Over's sequel) so here you guys go.

Insane mega spoilers for this murder mystery fic!

Written for prompts posted by @chriscalledmesweetie.

Chapter rating G.

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“There’s something – John, look at me, something I’d like to say. I’m afraid I made a bad job of it the first time.”

I look up from this blog. Rosie’s first day with the new playgroup, admittedly, isn’t riveting subject matter, and there really hasn’t been any movement in the case with the three-fingered corpse and the canister of exotic nuts. Yet.

“Sherlock?”

“I’d very much like – I mean would you –”

“Sherlock, you know I’ll marry you. Lestrade, Donovan and your brother in cleats couldn’t change my mind.”

“No, it’s not – not that. It’s something else we got a bit – back to front." He's pacing; that means it's serious. "The night we met, we –”

“Ran up twelve blocks and down fifteen and up an alley or two and over several roofs, as I remember. And I forgot my cane until –”

“Yes, yes. Exactly that. We dined at Angelo’s, and you said you weren’t my, my –”

“Date.”

“Yes. And then we moved in together, and then we broke up – twice, as I recall – and then we moved in together again, and then we started sleeping together, and I asked you to marry me and –”

“Oddly enough, Sherlock, I remember all this.”

“But you see, that’s the point. Do you remember my ever asking you out on a date?”

Well, fair question.

“I did so want it to be – that first time –" There's that face-scrunch that means his gears are grinding. "John, will you go out with me? Tonight? Dinner?”

(I remember listening to the litany of text after text from The Woman: I’m sad tonight. Let.s have dinner. – You looked sexy on television. Let’s have dinner.)

“I – ah – right.” I nod sharply. “Yeah. Cracking good idea, dinner.”

He seizes my hands then, in a haphazard, knuckle-crushing grip, and I swear he dances up and down on the carpet a few steps. “Perfect! Reservations. I’ll make reservations. Seven o’clock. You’ll be my date. That was what we left out. Date.” He’s already striding towards his room. “I’ve already asked Mrs. Hudson if she could take Rosie – casual seems right, John, you – you look rather fine in the – you wear the blue Oxford well. Brings out.” He gestures vaguely in the neighbourhood of his eyes.

And it’s… nice? Taking my turn in the bath when five-thirty rolls around; shaving extra carefully, bit of product, buttoning up the shirt (I hung it up on the back of the bathroom door while I showered, to knock the wrinkles out), my best shoes. A queer little heart-flutter, as if we haven't been a couple for yonks, whether we knew it or not; Sherlock looking… absolutely stunning, as if he can ever be anything else. He pops the collar of that coat with a flourish as we exit to the street, and I want to say you swanning prat and I want to say look at him, he’s mine.

Offering his arm. Hailing a cab. Angelo showing us to a table, the special menu, wine poured from a decanter where it’s been breathing in advance of our arrival, on the house for you, Sherlock, then bustling off.

“Does this evening, er, include a chase, or…?”

“Not tonight, John,” Sherlock says, glancing at the menu. “Tonight I’d like to…” He sets the card aside with a nervous dry-swallow. “Do things differently.”

Angelo reappears and sets down a candle between us, and turns his thumb up.

I smile, and return the gesture. As I lower my hand, Sherlock covers my hand with his. The light flickers in his eyes and his glossy curls. He lifts his glass, and the reflected flame glows red in its depths.

“To starting over,” he says. “And no interruptions this time.”

Comment On AO3

"Are you sure?" Sherlock eyed the familiar street with wonder.

"Completely sure." The man behind him in the big blue box smiled. He was leaning over Sherlock's shoulder, trying to get a peek ... "This the moment?" he asked, grinning wider.

"This was ... this was it," Sherlock stammered. His feet betrayed him, already eagerly stepping out of the box and onto the cobblestone pavement.

He made it two steps towards Angelo's before the thought struck him. "What if he doesnt-?"

"-Want you?!" The man mocked incredulity, shaking his head, "trust me ... you're irresistible." Then he shut the doors of the Tardis, and Sherlock had to move or risk being seen.

He took a deep breath, then heard the whir of the machine disappearing behind him.

This was it.

.

Sherlock straightened his suit jacket, running his fingers through his messy curls and ... decided to take the jacket off and make himself appear as much like his younger self as possible.

Next ... he shot a text to himself. Waiting until that Sherlock was out of the way in the loos, he stole into the same seat beside John.

"So ... you have a girlfriend?" John was just asking.

Perfect timing.

. ... God, how much he had missed this John!

. eager, and open, and .... waiting ... ?

.

"Not really my area." he answered, swallowing his fears.

He feigned interest out the window, keeping his minds-eye firmly fixed on John. Trying to capture and record every minute detail of this precious moment.

"Oh," John took a bite, and then looked up again quickly, "Oh? You ... have a boyfriend, then?"

Sherlock's eyes flitted towards John's despite his best efforts.

"Which is fine, of course!" John hurried to add.

"Of course it's fine," Sherlock answered, suddenly needing water. He took a deep drink and caught his eyes drifting back to meet John's.

"So you have a boyfriend?" John asked.

Hurried pulse. Short breaths.

John had even licked at his lips when he spoke, like he was nervous ... afraid to ask? ... how had he not noticed before ... ?

"Nope," Sherlock replied, deepening his voice to a purr. The effect was not lost on John ...

Dilated eyes.

. Cheeks turning rosy.

. Slight shift in his seat ...

"Not unless ... you are applying for the job?" Sherlock asked unconcerned, unbuttoning the top button of his shirt.

John was watching his neck ... his pulse. Licking his lips again. His breathing hitched. Heavy.

This was hardly a fair game.

.

"Maybe we should go?" he asked, extending his hand.

Suddenly John rose with him.

Then hesitated.

"Did we need to-" John looked out the window, "... your murderer?" he asked, genuinely concerned they would let a criminal roam free if they left? It was adorable.

"Oh ... just passing the time," Sherlock reassured him with a dismissing wave of his hand, "it was a long-shot he would appear." Then ... as much as he wanted to stay and enjoy what followed ...

. Decided ...

He'd better go tell his younger, idiotic self .... the chances he was throwing away if he did not continue.

He would be understanding.

"Let me settle the bill," he lied, excusing himself to see John eagerly already out the door pacing back and forth with a smile on his face.

(psst! ... more is beneath cut!) - Liri

To you, John Watson’s always been fire.

The candle that begins to thaw that frozen thing in your chest you put on ice long ago. The fireplace that draws you in to warm your hands. The conflagration that incinerates you if you get too close.

You want a do-over now, of all the times that John was fire and you were ice.

The disastrous first night at Angelo’s, obviously, when you told him you were already taken, married to your work. (And you hate clichés, but you launched that one at him as though it were luminously original.)

If you had it to do over again, you’d lean in and say, “You’re the first one who’s ever made me want to give it a try.”

That would be honest, and it could, if John were put off, be played as a witticism. And your whole life after that night would have been different.

The fireplace at the Cross Keys Inn, when you were terrified and needed John and were even more terrified of needing John than of doubting your own reason. And John was stunned and hurt when you said—furiously—to leave you alone, and when you added—contemptuously—that you didn’t have friends. You saw how he shut himself off, and you were too off-balance and self-involved to make it right then and there.

If you had it to do over again, what would you say? “Yes, you’re my friend, John. My only one. I’m rattled, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it.”

What would John have said? Where would you and he be now? You could have avoided the entire Moriarty catastrophe at Barts, if you’d let John in enough to listen to him, that night and all the nights after.

But no, you had to throw him at Henry’s therapist, and feel sorry for yourself that he was all too willing to get away from you.

The bonfire that nearly killed him the night Mary turned up at Baker Street, feigning incomprehension and helplessness and you fell for it, didn’t you, always wanting to be John’s knight in shining armour. You couldn’t tell him when you pulled him out of the fire, half-alive and dazed from smoke inhalation, with Mary shrieking and caterwauling on the sidelines.

But the next morning, you should have. If you had it to do over again, you’d introduce your parents to John like a rational human being, hustle them off after 2.5 minutes of small talk, and tell him: “If you’d died last night, I’d be dead this morning.”

The fireball that hurled you and Mycroft and John out of 221B, your survival an inexplicable miracle you’d deride if you saw it on television. But somehow you and John dying together in an explosion was far preferable to the half-life you lived without him, between the drugs and the isolation and the estrangement.

If you had it to do over again, what would you say? “It’s a miracle we’re alive, both of us. We’ll die one day in any case, but I’ll never again risk you dying before knowing what you are to me.”

Every time you had a choice about John Watson, you managed to make the wrong one. He’s still fire and you’re still ice, he’s still the sun and you’re still reflecting the light he conducts. You’re both wounded by time and silence, and before he settles for another Mary and pushes you at Irene—maybe this is the moment for a do-over. Maybe this is the moment you summon your courage and tell him honestly.

“John?”

“Yeah, what is it? You need something?”

“You. I need you.”

Now let’s see where this goes.  

*

tbc tomorrow

Thanks for reblogging!

@calaisreno, thank you for the May prompt series. 🤍 Writers, I'd love to be tagged on ALL your May prompt fics 🙏

1554 words / Prompt: Do-Over

She’s determined to take it all away from him. Every damn thing. All the little things. 

He wonders why he didn’t notice it happening. The little smirks when she reads his blog. The comments when he mentions Sherlock, insignificant but biting. It’s been systematic, and he’s let it happen. 

None of it seemed worth arguing about. When he met her, he’d already mourned and tried so many times to put it away, to think of it as something that he would endure. Something terrible, but that’s how life is, the good and the bad, and you still have to go on living. He survived.

So he hadn’t argued; that would have taken too much energy, and he never had enough of that in those days. 

She’d been wonderful, really, at the beginning. She’d gone to the grave with him, stood by him, let him mourn. She’d been patient, lovingly patient, urging him back into life. 

“Are you never going to eat Thai food again?” she would ask. 

Or: “Why do you keep this old jumper with the burn holes? It’s unwearable.” 

Or: “We don’t need to take the newspaper. You can read it online.”

And gradually, she had replaced every damn thing with a new thing. New jumpers, Korean food. A different brand of tea. Romantic films. Different news programs. 

Even his old, stained mug. “It was chipped,” she said.

None of it was unreasonable, taken as individual actions. But all together it made his old life seem flawed, as if he hadn’t done anything right until he met her. 

He did notice. But he’d thought she was something good in his life, a new beginning, a person who knew what she wanted. It was flattering to be pursued. 

Every relationship requires a partner who gives in, who is the more reasonable one, the one who lets things go. He saw that in his parents, his mother headstrong and insistent, his father calm and accepting. Yes, dear.

That was how they were, before. Sherlock led, John followed. Sherlock had strops and broke crockery and said awful things sometimes, and John smoothed it all over. Or when he finally couldn’t, he would have his own strop, tell Sherlock to stop— 

You machine. 

He hadn’t seen that coming, either. His role was reining Sherlock in, pulling him back from the edge. That’s what he’d thought was happening. As it turns out, he was wrong. 

Maybe that’s why he can’t be the one to say, Stop it. Let me have this.

He doesn’t deserve a life now because he didn’t protect Sherlock when it really mattered. He let him go over the edge, fall—

Mary is a do-over. He was punishing himself, and she appeared, offering him a chance at something better. Letting himself be loved, cared for. She’s competent, not nostalgic. 

It’s an insidious trap, a carefully laid one. Where she could have let him mourn, let him remember who he was when he loved Sherlock— she has tried to reshape all his memories. Sherlock was a child, she seems to say; you were a fool to make yourself responsible for him. He had you under his thumb because he really was a sociopath. He didn’t care about you. He didn’t love you. I’m the best thing that could have happened to you.

And now, she’s taken the last thing. 

I like him. She said that in the cab, coming home. Home, to the flat she picked out and decorated, where there isn’t even one tiny piece of John Watson. 

She’d seen his anger, his grief. She’d been outraged, on his behalf. Do you have any idea what you’ve done to him? His anger was right. She’d affirmed it.

But afterwards she smiled like the cat who got the cream. As if it had all gone according to plan. She likes Sherlock. She’s going to talk him around. And once again, John will be the unreasonable one. 

And he sees how it will go. She’ll take credit for bringing them back together. It will be the three of them now. And of the two of them, Sherlock will find Mary the more interesting one, the one who really gets him. They will bond, and John will be the one they joke about. The third wheel. Poor John. He can see her tagging along on cases, texting Sherlock, giggling with him about private jokes. 

She’ll let him have Sherlock, as long as it’s clear that she owns John now. 

Let me have this. 

If he wants it, he’s going to have to take it back. He’s going to have to say no to Mary, if he wants Sherlock back. He’s still angry, but now that he sees what’s happening, he can’t unsee it. He’ll never be happy in the life she’s prepared for him, free from all the clutter and disarray of life with Sherlock. She’ll keep him in their tidy flat and let him out to go play with Sherlock. And if he ever starts to crave that life again, she’ll find a way to separate him from it. 

It’s after midnight and he’s standing outside of 221B. He’s already mentally rehearsed several versions of an apology when his phone buzzes.