[It comes after a pause, and another pause follows it. Sherlock doesn't smile, though he thinks he probably should. He's watched people long enough to know that humour covers a multitude of sins but at the moment he can't quite find his. Still, he manages a marked gentleness. He tries. It dissipates with a sigh.]
You know John; he has his particular... focus.
[Another pause.]
Mary. Mary Morstan arrived shortly before I did.
[Morstan, not Watson, and that says enough, doesn't it?]
Besides, he isn't exactly watchful on the best of days; that isn't quite why I keep him in retainer, as it were.
[Sherlock's gaze drops to his coffee, and he frowns down into it thoughtfully before taking another sip. Molly remembers, remembers how he takes his coffee, can apparently manifest it for him as though by an extension of his own will, and it isn't as though he hadn't noticed, it isn't even that he doesn't care, but frankly he doesn't for a moment understand why she keeps trying. Why she's even willing to remember anymore, when she knows as well as he does that all he's going to do is use that when it occurs to him to do so, with only as much regard for the consequences as the eternally self-absorbed can muster. Not much. Never much. He plays a larger game, or pretends he does when otherwise his only choice would be to prove that he doesn't know how to play the smaller one.]
no subject
[It comes after a pause, and another pause follows it. Sherlock doesn't smile, though he thinks he probably should. He's watched people long enough to know that humour covers a multitude of sins but at the moment he can't quite find his. Still, he manages a marked gentleness. He tries. It dissipates with a sigh.]
You know John; he has his particular... focus.
[Another pause.]
Mary. Mary Morstan arrived shortly before I did.
[Morstan, not Watson, and that says enough, doesn't it?]
Besides, he isn't exactly watchful on the best of days; that isn't quite why I keep him in retainer, as it were.
[Sherlock's gaze drops to his coffee, and he frowns down into it thoughtfully before taking another sip. Molly remembers, remembers how he takes his coffee, can apparently manifest it for him as though by an extension of his own will, and it isn't as though he hadn't noticed, it isn't even that he doesn't care, but frankly he doesn't for a moment understand why she keeps trying. Why she's even willing to remember anymore, when she knows as well as he does that all he's going to do is use that when it occurs to him to do so, with only as much regard for the consequences as the eternally self-absorbed can muster. Not much. Never much. He plays a larger game, or pretends he does when otherwise his only choice would be to prove that he doesn't know how to play the smaller one.]