Archived fic rec - Tea With Martha

[sakura_no_miko]

Title: Tea With Martha

Author: tiwtin

Fandom: Sherlock Holmes (films)

Rating: NC-17

Pairing: Holmes/Watson/Mary

Warnings: explicit sex (bisexual), threesome, angst, homophobia (historical context), some trickery that could be considered dubcon

Other notes: threesomes solve everything, some historical RPF

Length: Medium

Summary: Mary notices her husband is pining for Mr. Holmes and with Mrs. Hudson’s encouragement decides to fix the problem.

 

I admit I have a weakness for the “threesome solves everything” trope. It’s a relatively unrealistic solution to love triangles, but it’s almost always hot.

I actually enjoy the psuedo-RPF bent to this. There’s a legitimate reason why Mary might be more open-minded and willing to share her husband with Holmes, and I’ve always enjoyed the passage where she explains why–that she saw that two men could love each other, and she won’t begrudge Holmes and her husband that.

The sex scene was pretty creative, too. It’s the little details, like Mary having Holmes shave off his beard so it won’t be as quickly obvious that he’s snuck in, or Watson’s freezing in realization when he realizes there are two people in the room with him. So, story-wise, it’s a lovely bit of fluffy smut.

Admittedly, there’s some rather hideous formatting (red text on pink isn’t the easiest thing in the world to read), and I find it a little odd that Martha/Mrs. Hudson is used interchangeably, sometimes even in the same paragraph. I mean, it makes sense for Holmes to think of her as Mrs. Hudson, but I’m not sure why Mary keeps switching back and forth.

On another note, the author’s note always caught my attention. “I bash Mary quite a lot in my other fics, so I wanted to see if I could have her be a cool character.” I’m not sure what to feel about that. I do like how Mary is characterized in here. And it is better to see her like this than being bashed as the odd one out in the Holmes/Watson epic bromance. Just can’t decide if I think it’s cool that the author decided to take a chance on Mary, or sad that this is sort of the exception rather than the rule.

 

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Originally posted on tumblr on 01/05/13