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Sherlock stares down at John and Mary. They’re standing on the tarmac beside Mycroft’s car. Sherlock’s nose is practically pressed against the plane window, and he still can’t see John’s face. Mary and John. A red blob and a black blob.
Sherlock tries to hold John in focus, but he has to keep blinking in order to do that, and the colours bleed into each other again and again. Red into black, black into red.
They are standing arm in arm, Mary’s hip pressed close to John’s. And it really comes down to what Sherlock prefers to see. Would he rather see in more detail -- how still John is, how Mary breaks his attention by leaning her head against his shoulder, how John squints in the grey light? Would Sherlock rather see how the light shines through the thin gap of intimacy that grows and shrinks and shifts between John and Mary? Or would he rather see them become one, as red yields to black, and black consumes red?
Sherlock blinks. Black pulls away from red, but John and Mary are still together. Closer than ever, thinks Sherlock bitterly, United in the loss of their best man. He imagines the e-mails. Dear Sherlock, Merry Christmas, Lots of love from John and Mary.
Perhaps he should let himself cry. He would only need to relax his throat. There are two flight attendants watching him, and he should be too embarrassed to cry. But he finds himself thinking that the shame would be a distraction. And anyway, what could an air hostess tell Mycroft that he doesn’t already know?
Sherlock closes his eyes, and in the moment of release that follows, tears escape. He lets them run, shudders, sits up straight again. Clean your face, Sherlock, says Mycroft’s voice. Don’t be ridiculous.
He wipes his face with his hand, drying his cheeks and dragging his knuckles across his eyes. When he looks down there are smudges across the back of his hand -- black powder mixed in with his tears, and dissolving.
This mascara is supposed to be waterproof.
~
The mascara is a new addition to his kit. Molly had slipped it to him in the morgue last week, when he’d asked for a pen.
‘Mascara?’ he’d said, in a poisonous tone. ‘I don’t need mascara.’
‘Thought you’d like to try it, anyway.’
He tried to pass it back to her, but she didn’t budge.
‘Just try it, Sherlock. You know, men used to put it on their moustaches to make them look darker and thicker. I think. Have you ever died your hair, or -- or worn a wig? It’s not much different from that, really.’
He scoffed, but Molly smiled because when he doesn’t say anything, she’s won. She drew his attention to the face of the corpse on the table between them, and talked him through the process of separating his eyelashes with a special brush before trying anything with the mascara.
‘You can use the brush on your eyebrows too. And when you use the mascara, watch out for clumps,’ she finished.
Sherlock was bent over the dead woman, inspecting the state of her eye makeup with his magnifying glass. The magnifying glass was just a way to look busy, really -- he didn't need it to see that stray particles of glitter had migrated down the woman's face, and blue powder lay thick in the creases of her eyelids.
Sherlock pitied her. He understood that she’d wanted to look young and alive for the man she loved. And now she was dead.
‘Sherlock?’
‘Molly. I’m…. Thanks, Molly.’
He put the mascara in his shirt pocket, and tried to meet her eyes. He couldn't stop thinking about how he'd commented on Molly’s lipstick, many months ago.
‘Are you wearing lipstick? You weren’t wearing lipstick before.’
‘I…. er, I refreshed it a bit.’
Always he’d thought of himself as miles ahead of Molly, so much cleverer, so much more subtle. These days, he wasn’t so sure.
‘What happened to the lipstick?’
‘It wasn’t working for me.’
‘Really? I thought it was a big improvement. Mouth’s too… small, now.’
Molly’s smile was a little too tight across her face. He noticed some discrepancy in skin tone between her chin and her neck. It wasn’t the right time of year for a tan. So either she was wearing the wrong colour of foundation, she hadn’t taken enough time to blend it in.
Wrong foundation, Sherlock decided. He could see the exact colour where some of it had rubbed off on her blouse. That meant Molly did her make-up before she even put her clothes on in the morning.
For a split second, he visualized her standing in front of her bathroom mirror, naked except for the paint and powder on her face. She was seeing herself as she wanted a lover to see her. Her hair was nicely arranged on her shoulders and her eyes were bright.
But here under the harsh fluorescent lights of St. Bart’s morgue, she looked wrong.
Thinking of Molly, so naked in front of him, Sherlock felt equally exposed. He wondered how he looked under the panel lights. And what about the striplights out in the corridors?
Instinctively he raised his hand to his face. A few layers of make-up can lend you an extra bit of charm or confidence, but when you let your guard slip, it only makes the cracks pathetically obvious.
~
A week after Sherlock shot Magnussen, the day dawns cold and cloudy. He has a flight to catch.
Mycroft’s car will be pulling up outside 221B in a matter of minutes, so he sits down at the make-up table in his bedroom and gets to work.
Ignoring his tie-on beards, his non-prescription glasses and his detachable collars, he applies concealer, foundation, blusher, and lip stain. Everything he needs to disguise himself as Sherlock Holmes. He’s good at this. Everything in moderation, nothing obvious. He wants to look impeccable, perfect -- not like he's plastered with makeup.
Dr Watson likes the natural look, does he?
Sherlock has two mascaras now. There's Irene’s Borghese, in a silver tube with gold trim. If it’s good enough for her, it’s good enough for him. So he bought it. It stands waiting beside the eyeliner he nicked in the restaurant to make John laugh.
That didn’t go according to plan, of course. John had barely glanced at the ridiculous scribble on Sherlock’s upper lip before turning back to his menu, muttering at him from under his own thick moustache. Sherlock looked for John, and he wasn't there.
But in the end, the plan had worked. Sort of. John was with Mary, and Sherlock stood on the other side. He was John’s best friend and John’s best man. Stay Precise.
And then there’s the present from Molly, a squat tube covered in promises. It’s pink, obviously. He shoves the Borghese aside as he reaches for it.
The sentimental option? Oh, Sherlock.
When he pulls out the sticky brush and starts trying to apply mascara to his eyelashes, his hand is shaking.
~
‘As it turns out, you’re needed.’
‘For God’s sake, make up your mind…! Who needs me this time?’
Sherlock reflexively looks out of the window.
Don’t be silly, Sherlock. You won’t be able to see Dr Watson from way up there.
He’s not going to Eastern Europe. Moriarty’s face is on every TV in the city, and Sherlock’s punishment can wait.
The jet touches down on the runway, and John and Mary come back into view outside Sherlock’s window. The black blob separates from the red blob, and John begins to walk toward the jet before Mary pulls him back.
The flight attendant hands Sherlock a wet wipe. He accepts it gratefully, and the man doesn’t seem to mind that he’s not capable of a proper thank-you, only a small high-pitched noise that almost becomes a sob.
In the time between leaving and landing, Sherlock’s cried off all his makeup.