Work Text:
I remember the wedding in fragments I cannot delete: John’s nervous hands, Mary’s veil, the tremor in my voice as I stood beside him and explained love to a room that believed I meant theirs.
Sentiment is a chemical defect. Yet his happiness clouded every judgement I made.
I played the violin, watched them dance, and left before anyone noticed the best man had vanished. I returned to Baker Street alone.
Marriage altered the pattern without ending it. Sometimes Mary came on cases, quick and fearless, fitting herself between us without hesitation. Sometimes John came alone, and London became ours again: crime, the elation of the pursuit, his shoulder striking mine as we ran. Afterwards he checked his phone, smiled at her message and went home.
Then came the nights that neither of us mentioned in daylight.
He climbed seventeen steps without warning, never a predictable pattern. I waited, naked and stoic, every night. He entered without knocking, gave me everything except himself, then dressed and returned to his wife.
Mary once watched me watching him.
“Neither of us were the first, you know.”
The familiar tread sounds below me now: seventeen steps towards my door, my body, another borrowed hour.
Yes, Mary; neither of us was first. You were the one he chose, and I shall not be the last.