Chapter Text
The footsteps start acting strange after he gets sent back to England.
It is not the first time; once, after uni, but before enlisting, there was a moment where they flickered brightly, letting him know there was some choice he was making, that would bring him to his soulmate.
Or away from it, as it turned out.
When he’d signed his enlistment, they’d dimmed right before his eyes. He’d felt a blank, hollow moment. “Oh,” he’d intoned, immediately feeling foolish for even entertaining the other as a serious option. He’d had this stupid hope… he was meant to do this, he knew that, to the roots of his hair. He’d thought maybe following his dream might also mean following his heartline.
“It happens to everyone, son,” his recruiter had said, clasping his shoulder in a sympathetic way. “You’ll come home and they’ll light right up and you can find her and settle down.”
It wasn’t like they were gone, exactly. With the right focus, John could see them, but they were faint enough that they never caught his eyes, really. It was the same with most of his fellow soldiers. Once, one of the men in his charge, a newer recruit was on patrol and suddenly looked down.
He’d looked terrified. Found, and lost. “Uh, sir,” he’d said, in a thin voice. “Captain Watson.”
Of course, John couldn’t see the other man’s path -- but he had McNally from the beginning, his focus flickering down and his composure falling; the faint tremor down his spine. “Talk to me, McNally. Are we talking about a flicker?”
Tucker McNally’s adams apple visibly bobbed as he shook his head. “Landing strip, sir.”
“Shit.”
By then John Was old enough that McNally, at twenty two seemed like a child, even though John had to angle his chin up to look at him. Twenty two, all elbows and single eyebrow. “Go back to base, Private.”
Wide eyed, terrified, he turned on his heel. There wasn’t a lof of precedent for this, but John knew there would be no happy news if he let McNally follow the map in front of him. Finding your soulmate, on a patrol a hundred miles outside of war-torn Kandahar. “Private,” he said to his retreating back. “I’m sorry.”
When he realized he’d somehow turned twenty-five, and then thirty and never seen the footsteps ahead of him light up like a proximity warning, he remembered McNally’s face, ashen for weeks, and though it could be worse.
He imagined his soulmate sometimes, far away, but safe. In England, he supposed. She was five years younger than him, give or take, because that’s how old he’d been when they’d materialized. He imagined her sometimes, but not often. If he did, it would be impossible to reenlist. He was on his last tour, he’d decided. He’d lived his dream, become a man he was proud of. His dad would be proud of him. He could go home.
He came to that decision, and then a bullet went through his lower leg, shattering both bones into a jigsaw mess.
*
Back in London, crippled, finding the great shining love of his life was literally the last thing on his mind.
“Have you left the house since your last appointment, John?”
John gave an affirmative grunt.
“To anywhere but Tescos?”
John glared at her.
“I’m just saying, John. A lot of soldiers find purpose in looking for their mates. It help them adjust to civilian life,” Ella said.
John felt a surge of angry go through him, cold and stale like it was a dish that had been sitting out for days. He looked down at his useless leg, “I can barely get to the tube station without...” he said, pausing to grimace. “I’m not nineteen anymore.”
He’d walked ten miles, once, when he was twenty. Not because he’d really been ready to meet her, or vice versa -- she would have been only fifteen at the time, but because that was what you did when you were a lad. He’d followed the twists and turns until he’d been winded and laughing, and took a cab home.
“There is something we haven’t tried that I think would be beneficial, John, but you won’t like it.” Ella said.
“Don’t tell me, then,” he said, breathless. He rubbed at the swell of his chest with his palm to give himself relief.
“That’s it.” She gave a delicate nod to his hand. “I think adding a massage to your PT would help both, actually. Your lingering rib pain, and the other.”
“And the one I made up,” he spat.
“You should be gentle with yourself, John. Your body is confused. You lost a lot in the blast.” Ella’s office was decorated in taupe and blue, sterile right angles and romantic lighting. John hated the place immensely, and focused on it instead of what she was saying, because it was so, so much easier. He hardly heard her finish, because he was busy hating the clock, tick-tick-ticking out his last minute of his session: “but not everything,” she said, and she was so very wrong.
*
The funny (hollow, ironic, gallows humor, and not the delightful kind) thing about coming back to London in fewer pieces that he left was that his footprints hadn’t changed. It was strange, and terrible to be able to look down and see the same two footprints in front of him he always had, instead of one footprint and one peg.
It messed him up to glance down and see that, see that nothing had changed. Between the indents of both shoes ahead of him and the pain he still felt from nerve endings he no longer owned, he had to remind himself eight, ten, twelve times a day this is your life now.
The woman at the checkout counter punched in his bag of milk and tried to make small talk, and all he could think of was hello, John Watson at your service, sorry I’m only most of a man.
But, at heart, he was still a medical professional who respected other medical professionals, so at their next session, when Ella suggested he take walks, not for soul-searching purposes, but simply to vary his routine he started.
Which is when he ran into Mike.
At first he tries to avoid Mike, which works, until he calls out his full name and John is presented with the two unpleasant options of talking to a man who knew him as a robust, playful youth before he’s had a chance to perfect his gait and get rid of his cane, and on the other hand, looking like a total, complete tit.
“Ah. Hardly recognized you.”
“Understandable. I did get fat,” Mike grinned, because he was a genuinely nice man.
John, however, is a bitter husk, so he completely fails to say anything polite in response. They talk for a while over coffee. Past John’s initial humiliation, it is pleasant enough. Mike is jovial and talks over the awkward silences John keeps blithely starting. His mouth has been dry since e got back in the country, and he never seems to catch his breath.
Mike suggests he get a flatshare, and John frowns. “Who’d want me for a flatmate?”
“Huh,” Mike huffed.
John raises an inquisitive eyebrow, and Mike explained. “You’re the second person to tell me that today.”
Under them, the footprints before him flickered.
John had to swallow against bile in his throat. After a moment of deliberation, he said, “Who was the first?” and the glowing outline, flickered once more before solidifying in front of him in a cheerful right-this-way.
*
Every step John Watson had taken for thirty-five years had led him to whoever was on the other side of the door. The excitement clawing at his insides was almost painful in its intensity. Mike is ahead of him, but John can barely hear him over his own churning waterfall of nerve. Mike Stamford has a friend, a peculiar friend, and he’s going to introduce the two of them on the grounds that they are both completely unsuited for cohabitation. And unless there is someone else in there, this unlikable human is John’s soul mate.
He finally knows what Tucker McNally meant, now. The footsteps before him are landing strip luminous but he is careful not to look at them, because it feels so private. The thrum of being on the cusp of the rest of his life, the rest of his life with his soulmate, fills him from head to toe. He’d almost given up as his thirties came to a close and the footprints in front of him had never come to rest in front of another human being.
John was licking his lip in a twisting anticipation as Mike Stamford opened the door and stepping in confidently, completely unaware of the knots he is tied in: him, meeting his forever in such a debt. At heart, he’s still a soldier, he does hard things. The weaker man inside of him wants to run in the other direction to give himself a few more weeks, months, hell, a year.
*
“Here,” he said, chest ready to burst. Any minute now, the tall stranger leaning over his microscope was going to look at John, look down, and realize that he’d been waiting to meet him for most of his life. John knows exactly how old this man is, because he himself was four years old when his footprints appeared to lead him. “Use mine.”
“Old friend of mine, John Watson,” Mike Stamford says, leaving the other man to make his own introduction. Instead, he doesn’t even look up. The stranger holds out his hand, not sparing a single glance John’s way, as if he expects John to walk all the way up to him. Humiliatingly, he does. Making the other man come to him literally does not cross his mind, he simply walks feet careful on the pulsing outlines between point A and B, and presses his mobile into his warm hand.
The man sends a quick text before shoving it back towards him, propelling himself to his feet. He has striking features, cheeks broad and defined and slanted eyes wide set. John had always assumed his soul mate would be a woman, but he’s appreciated enough men in his day that he isn’t completely knocked on his arse by the revelation.
In the time it takes John to go through his briefly-started-and-quickly-thwarted crisis of sexuality, Mike’s friend -- his soulmate -- has time to give him a quick once over.
This is it. His gaze has gone all the way down, before coming back up. He has to have seen. John’s been waiting for this, not with single minded focus, because he’s enjoyed all of the moments that lead him here, school and military training and learning to unclasp a girl’s bra without making her laugh, but with more than a little anticipation. Instead of saying what he’s ready for (Would you like to grab a cup of coffee? Nice to meet you, I’ve been expecting you. Or even just a Hello.) he says, “Afghanistan or Iraq?”
“Afghanistan,” John answers his bizarre question. And then, after a pause where the other man fails to explain, “How did you know about Afghanistan?”
Beneath his feet, the scant three steps between John and his soulmate are pulsing like a glowing heartbeat.
The man before him narrows his eyes, blue and green and someplace in between. “How do you feel about the violin?”
“I … it’s fine?”
“I play the violin when I’m thinking. Sometimes I don’t talk for days on end. Will that bother you?”
“Pardon?”
“Potential flatmates should know the worst about each other.”
John flings his focus at Mike Stamford, looking unassuming in the corner of the room. “Did you tell him about me?”
Mike smiles a bit as he shakes his head once, offering no answers.
“I told Mike just this morning that I must be a difficult man to find a flatmate for, and here he is, just come from lunch with his recently invalidated old friend, back from the war. It was a simple enough jump. Anyway, I’ve got my eye on a nice place in central London, between the two of us we should be able to afford it. We’ll meet there tomorrow at seven.”
“That’s it?” John jokes weakly, relief flooding his system. Of course he realizes it. Perhaps he’s shy. John realizes he agrees, suddenly: the first conversation they have certainly doesn’t need an audience. “We’ve just met, and now we’re going to look at a flat? I don’t know anything about you --I don’t even know your name.”
“I know you’re an army doctor and you’ve recently been invalidated home from Afghanistan. I know you’ve got a brother who’s worried about you, but you won’t go to him for help because you don’t approve of him. Possibly because he’s an alchoholic, but more likely because he just walked out on his partner for his soulmate, and I know that your therapist thinks your limp is psychosomatic, quite correctly, I’m afraid.”
“The name’s Sherlock Holmes,” he pronounces with a distinct purr, “And the address is 221b Baker Street.” He leaves John with a click of the tongue and a gaudy wink, and John’s footsteps follow him out the door. He watches them, feeling baffled and elated in equal measures.
*
He googles his name after he goes home. After a long walk with the uneven gait, a tripod of useless limb and metal, and John is sitting in front of his computer. Now that they’ve met, John finds some sense of ease inside himself: as if it were the decided that was the entire trial, and now is the calm.
Which is patently untrue, of course, but once he’s chosen his course of action, he seems to find that reservoir of calm, always. His hands are steadiest after he’s aimed at his goal. He types in his name slowly, almost savoring it, before pouring over his website.
“What an interesting man you are, Sherlock Holmes,” he says, touching his screen with his index finger.
*
He goes to meet Sherlock later that night at a place that John’s pension is probably going to cover about fifteen percent of. At the door, Sherlock informs him that the landlady has offered him a deal for ensuring her husband’s death. John stifles a laugh against his knuckles.
He follows Sherlock Holmes upstairs thinking about how unlike anything he’d expected the other man is. Unlike anything he could have known to expect, from maverick detective to his damn voice, nevermind male.
“This could be very nice,” he tells him, as Sherlock Holmes is informing him that he went ahead and moved in.
“Oh,” John says, sorry for having embarrassed him. Sherlock goes to scoop up some of the miscellany as their potential future landlady settles in behind them. John’s just counting down the minutes until they can go somewhere and he can say, “Hello. I found you,” like he’s imagined since childhood.
“There’s another bedroom upstairs.” Mrs. Hudson says, “If you’ll be needing two, that is.”
John slides his eyes over to Sherlock, expecting to share a secret, sly look with him. Instead, Sherlock scowls. “Of course we’ll be needing two.”
John is not quite sure what to say, with Sherlock standing there, sneering at the assumption Mrs. Hudson has made that they’re together. “Yes,” John agrees into the following silence, trying to soften it. “We’ve only just met.”
Mrs. Hudson hovers in the wings, watching them, and nervous as John is, they seem to agree without saying it that they’ll both move in. John can hear her, just out of focus, making small clanking sounds in the kitchen.
Sherlock cracks open his computer. “I looked you up last night,” John admits with a sly smile.
“Anything interesting?”
“You said you could read a software designer by his tie and an airline captain by his left thumb,” John says.
“Yes,” Sherlock agrees in a low voice that coils around John’s stomach warmly. “And I can read your military career in your face and your leg and your brother’s drinking habits on your mobile phone.”
“How?” John asks, heart thumping, and the dread of being laid bare making his tongue heavy in his mouth.
Before Sherlock can answer, Mrs. Hudson mentions the serial suicides. Calls them right up Sherlock’s street. John is aware of them; he’d been cleaning his gun a week ago and thinking how would one even get in contact with a suicide club, in an abstract way.
“Three exactly the same,” she says.
“There’s been another.” Sherlock says, eyes out the window. “And something’s different.”
Police lights catch John’s eye from outside the window, and shortly after, a man in a suit crosses the threshold.
Sherlock doesn’t wait for him to say anything, or bother with introductions. “Where?”
“Brixton, Lauriston Gardens.”
“What’s new about this one? You wouldn’t come get me if there wasn’t something different.”
Their exchange happens quickly, but he says, “Will you come,” and Sherlock says he will, and as soon as he leaves, Sherlock is giddy as a child. John watches with a dry mouth as he excuses himself, tells John not to wait up (as if) and then, John is left alone with Mrs. Hudson, his heartline following faithfully, stretching out between them as if to let him know how easy it would be to follow him. John watches from his chair as the shoe-prints behind Sherlock follow him down the stairs.
And then, just as quickly as the thing is done, it is undone. “You’re a doctor. In fact, you’re an army doctor,” Sherlock says, popping back up from downstairs. “Any good?”
“Very good,” John says, because he is.
“Seen a lot of injuries then, violent deaths?”
John nods. “Enough for a lifetime.”
“Care to see some more?”
*
“You’ve got questions,” Sherlock says i the cab.
John has so many, but he’s beginning to appreciate the delicious edge of something big, so instead of going for the obvious, he says, “Where are we going?” and “Who are you? What do you do?” and finally, “How did you know about Afghanistan.”
He lays out the details like a man putting the finishing touches on a painting: his hair, his posture, his tan, and the imaginary pain in his shoulder by the fact that he has his cane in the wrong arm. And Harry, with the fact that her phone is so new, engraved from Clara and already she’s given it away. “It’s only been on the market for two months. What other circumstances could there be to leave your spouse on such short notice besides running into your soulmate. You disapprove: you’re a romantic.”
“And how did you know about the drinking?” John asks, not correcting him about Harry being his sister, because he’s got the other part right.
*
Sherlock asks him out to dinner, in the middle of a murder investigation. John’s life this week is shaping up to be something better than he’d ever expect in ways he didn’t even know he wanted. He’s met his soulmate’s arch-enemy. Said soulmate is a consulting detective. Here he is, somehow, with something he didn’t know to expect.
“I met someone,” John tells him, with wry amusement. “He called himself your arch enemy.”
“And?”
“People don’t have arch enemies.”
Sherlock frowns. “Don’t they? What do they have, then?”
“Friends. People they like, people they don’t like.” John says, with a voice heavy with hinting.
“Dull,” Sherlock says.
“Girlfriends,” John says, “Boyfriends. Soulmates.”
“Well, as I was saying, dull.” Sherlock says, and John’s heart slams painfully against his ribs.
“You don’t have a girlfriend, then,” he says, just to be sure. He has an awful moment: they’re both in their thirties. He can’t possibly fault Sherlock if he finds out now that at some point he gave up on waiting for John Watson and started a relationship with someone else. people do, of course, have relationships with people that aren’t their soul mates. Harry and Clara, to wit, weren’t soul mates, but they were lovely. He can’t even fault Harry for deciding to dissolve their marriage for hers -- it was only the abruptness that sat wrong under his skin.
“Girlfriend,” Sherlock drawls with a hint of disdain. “ Not really my area.”
“Boyfriend?” John presses. “Which is fine, by the way.”
“I know it’s fine.”
John’s mouth is dry. “So you’ve got a boyfriend, then?”
“No.” Sherlock isn’t giving him much to work with here.
“Right, okay. Good. You’re unattached, like me.”
Sherlock frowns for a long moment. “John, uhm. I think you should know, I’m flattered by your interest, but I consider myself married to my work.” He gestures at the ground in front of him, awkwardly. “I don’t really… have a… or an interest in.”
John cuts him off before he can humiliate him into a smouldering pile of rubbish. “No, ah, I get it. It’s all… it’s all fine.”
There it is. They weren’t lingering together on the delicious edge, savoring the anticipation. There is a sadder truth, not completely unheard of. Sherlock Holmes is John Watson’s soul mate, but Sherlock’s heartline either does not exist or simply does not lead back to John Watson.
Well, shit. John downs his wine glass in a gulp, mourning the rest of his romantic life.
