Movieverse fic: Into Colours

[rabidsamfan]

In retrospect, Holmes realized, the brown suit was a sign of impending disaster. Watson had always been a natty dresser, but until the brown suit, that nattiness was expressed entirely in shades of black, gray, and white. Medical black, Watson called it, when one of the irregulars asked him once. Hides the bloodstains, Holmes had added, for the fun of watching the boys' eyes widen. But it was true enough that most doctors wore black, and even though Watson's finances had improved with the start of his small practice, his taste in clothing had not concerned his fellow lodger. It was all a part of the man, much as the nightmares of Afghanistan that never let him be for more than a week or two at a time unless the work was being particularly distracting.

But during the chase after the Order, after the day when Holmes had dispatched Watson to interview Jenny Shurston's friends, and Watson had come home with a key piece of intelligence, not from the friend, but from her younger brother's governess, something had changed. Watson's nightmares faded into dreams without the power to drive him from his bed. A month passed without one of the odd middle-of-the-night conversations which Holmes and Gladstone had come to cherish, if only for the strange tales that might be told and the biscuits that invariably landed on the floor when Watson fell asleep again on the settee.

Without the distraction of the murders, Holmes might have paid more mind to the changes. But it was hardly the first time Watson's eye had fallen on a comely face, and the case was far more interesting than any discussion of feminine charms could ever be. If he thought of it at all, it was only to be glad that at long last Watson had set aside his mourning; that the ghosts of Maiwand were finally giving him peace.

And then came the day that Watson acquired a blue suit. "Very nice," Holmes told him, thinking of how well it would fit in to the little restaurant near the Temple where the young lawyers gathered of an evening.

"I hope Mary thinks so," Watson said, taking one last glance into the mirror before he headed out the door.