Chapter Text
PART 1
Weddings are superfluous, expensive, petty, full of stupid traditions and stupid fights and fraught with resentment and heartbreak and sentiment (that loathed word). They are ostensibly the celebration of two people who are in love and want to spend the rest of their lives together, but that’s only the façade.
This is the first wedding Sherlock as has ever been (invited) to. It’s everything he expected it to be.
No one asks him to dance. No one kisses him.
It’s Sherlock’s stunned silence when John says like it should be the most obvious thing in the world that “you’re my best friend.” A title Sherlock feels he certainly hasn’t earned. A declaration of love. Someone loves him. No. John loves him.
It’s Sherlock throwing himself fully into the role of both best man and wedding planner. It’s taking each prospective guest aside to analyze them thoroughly (John’s wedding has to be perfect, because John is perfect and he deserves nothing less).
It’s photos of beheadings and Sydney Opera House napkins (a façade, how ironic, in hindsight, that she chose that).
It’s “nothing’s going to change” but Sherlock wants to shout, it already has!
It’s signing as a witness and the odd thought that he’s signing away his future, somehow.
It’s Major Sholto and John’s obvious admiration for the man (your ex. Your ex commander. Why didn’t you tell me about him John?) and Sherlock having to tamp down an unexpected swell of jealousy when Mary remarks “Neither of us were the first!”
It’s quite possibly the longest best man speech in history, interrupted by a brief attempted murder and a revelation that nearly shatters Sherlock like Waterford crystal on the stone tiles (It’s you. It’s always been you).
Too late Mycroft, Sherlock thinks, I’m already involved.
It’s John’s warm embrace and what Sherlock suspects are choked back tears (he didn’t mean to make everyone cry, people are so emotional) and he wonders if John can feel his heart pounding. It’s the waltz that he composed for the newly wedded couple (for John. I’m in love with you, John).
It’s a first (last) vow. Nominally to the Watson couple, in truth to John. But he includes Mary and the child because they are everything to John. It’s a final, unexpected deduction and a sick feeling when he realizes that he’s already lost John. To his wife and the baby that hasn’t come. He never stood a chance (How can you feel so happy for someone and so like you want to scream at the same time?)
(I love you)
It’s swallowing down the pain and the creeping loneliness and leaving before he starts bleeding feeling all over the floor like an open wound.
It’s a tightly buttoned collar and a tossed boutonniere and a long look that he didn’t quite mean to share with John, but John saw anyhow and turned away. Turned back to Mary, the person he loves. Her. Not Sherlock. The first wedding Sherlock attends makes him realize that he was stabbed and bled out (John. John. John.) long ago. He locks away his (broken, bleeding, wounded) heart and walks away into the cold and the dark and a 7% siren song.