Prompt from Saxiphones bring out my eyes:
AU where Mike Stamford never introduces our favorite army doctor and consulting detective. So, a year and a half later, when Sherlock stands on the roof of St. Barts, it's not because some deranged criminal put him there, he put himself there. Before he jumps, and before a crowd gathers, John Watson sees him from the street, calls the police, and runs up to the roof to talk the total stranger down.
John Watson yawned as he walked out of the surgery, leaning heavily on his cane as he pushed open the doors. Two gunshot victims had been treated; the two of them had shot each other. A person managed to break their ankle after getting their foot stuck in a toilet bowl; he didn't ask about that one. It was a surprisingly frequent occurrence, believe it or not. Someone else had broken their finger, and a five year-old prone to throwing tantrums had been in with a case of pneumonia. All in all, he was much more tired than he had expected to be after the work day, and was looking forwards to a night of crap telly on the sofa where he could just sit and not do much of anything.
His leg twinged as he walked through the lobby of St. Bart's and he sighed. He'd be able to sit and watch telly if he actually managed to get back to his flat. Damned leg. His therapist had told him for nearly a year straight that it was psychosomatic and that the pain would go away once he'd moved on from his past. He fired her about six months ago.
He paused and held the door open for a young woman who was just coming in, mousy brown hair and a timid smile. A murmured thank you and she was gone. John walked out the doors into the fading sunlight, across the sidewalk, towards the street.
He paused again, looking up. Not that you could tell, with all the buildings, but the sun's final rays cast a golden glow over everything, and if he squinted he could see darkness on one side of the horizon and myriads of colors on the other-
Oh.
John froze, peering up towards the sky. There was a figure on the roof. A tall, dark someone, more of a silhouette, but still a person, and standing far too close to the edge-
Don't be stupid, John, he thought to himself. How often do you see workmen up there trying to fix the bloody heating?
But the person was pacing, back and forth, kept leaning towards the edge, and there couldn't be another explanation. John pulled out his phone and dialed 999.
"Hello?" he said. "Yes, my name's John, I work at St. Bart's. There's a man on the roof, I think he's going to jump. … What the hell are you talking about, why would I joke about this? I'm a doctor, I take life very seriously! … No, nobody else has noticed- … Would you listen?! There is a man on a roof about to jump. … Yes, I'm being serious! … Okay. You'll send someone, then? … Good."
He hung up angrily. The woman on the other end of the phone would hardly let him get a word in edgewise. Thinking he would joke about something like this. Sergeant D-something. Dennison... Donovan. Donovan, that was right. How she ever made it to the rank of sergeant he had no idea, and now he worried slightly for Scotland Yard's integrity.
Glancing up at the figure again, a feeling of dread wormed its way into his heart before his face hardened and he began walking back towards the doors. If he could get up there, talk to the person, he might be able to keep the man occupied until the Yard arrived, buy some time.
The elevator being occupied by an elderly woman in a bulky wheelchair and a mother with several very noisy children, John cursed and went for the stairs instead, hardly noticing his limp wasn't quite bothering him as much...
At the rooftop, he slowed down as he reached the door, quietly opening it and stepping out onto the roof.
"So, what brings you up here?" he asked quietly, as so not to startle the other man.
The man, who had stopped his pacing again to look over the edge of the rooftop, whipped around to face John. His eyes were full of terror and fear and desperation for the briefest of moments, but it was quickly wiped away to be replaced by a blank mask. John could still see the hurt lying underneath.
"You going to tell me what you're doing up here?" he asked, slowly, carefully walking forwards, like one might when approaching a wild animal in the woods. The man just watched until John was standing next to him.
"...Afghanistan or Iraq?" he finally asked. His voice was a deep baritone, but the tone was quiet and
"I'm sorry?" John replied in confusion. Afghanistan- how could he know about that?
"Afghanistan or Iraq?" the man repeated.
"Afghanistan," John said faintly. The man 'hmmm-ed' before looking away.
"Doesn't matter," he mumbled, stepping up onto the rooftop edge. John's hand twitched; instinct screamed to pull him away but if he did that the man might fall off anyway. "Idiots, all of them. Don't care, can't appreciate it. Can't appreciate sheer intelligence, don't see the point. They see sentiment and different and psychopath. None of them care. If I fall, they wouldn't care. They'd probably be happy."
"Don't say that," John replied. "Of course they care. They'd be the psychopaths if they were laughing at somebody dying. There's got to be people out there who care about you."
"Mycroft doesn't," the man replied bitterly, mask crumbling away to reveal the shattered man underneath. "The Yard doesn't. The clients I help don't even care. Can't see it! Can't see intelligence right in front of them, saving their lives!"
"Just come down," John coaxed. "People under-appreciate others a lot, goodness knows it's happened to me enough times, but it doesn't justify this. Come down."
"There's nothing here anymore!" the man snapped. "Nothing left! People don't think!"
"What do you mean by that?" he asked, hearing the distant wail of sirens.
"People talk, all the time, but they don't think!" The man was shaking, tears were in his eyes. "All the time, they talk and talk and it hurts. I'm not a freak!"
John took a shaky breath.
"People say things that hurt," he replied quietly. "Horrible things, but that doesn't mean it's true."
"But... it is." The man's voice sounded even more broken than before, and he turned to John while a single tear dripped down his cheek. "Freak, noun, abnormal phenomenon. I'm certainly abnormal, and that's why it hurts because they're right."
Three police cars screeched to a halt down below, and a man nearly leaped out of one of the cars holding a megaphone.
"Sherlock!" he shouted. "It's Lestrade, what on Earth are you doing? Come down so we can talk, mate!"
"See?" John said. "He cares, he doesn't think you're a freak."
"Stupid," the man, Sherlock, replied dully, voice shaking. "He hates it. Thinks I show off all the time, he doesn't care."
"Well, he obviously does," John countered, watching as the man shoved the megaphone into another officer's hands before running inside the building with five other men. "He sounds worried, Sherlock. You should talk to him, give him a chance."
"I don't..." Now the man just sounded so very impossibly lost and so innocent it ripped at John's heart.
"Sherlock," John repeated. "Come down. It's going to be okay, just... come down."
"Why?" Sherlock asked suddenly, sharply. "Why did you come up here? You shouldn't care, nobody else does and I don't even know you."
"I came up here to talk a man out of committing suicide," John replied.
"But why?" Sherlock repeated, voice shaking and cracking as he tried to sound annoyed and failed miserably. "Why? Look at me, I'm a wreck. Why would you possibly even want to help me?"
"Because I don't think you want to jump," John replied softly. "I think you just wanted to see if there was someone out there who cared enough to stop you."
Their eyes met, silver-gray to brown, and John held out a hand.
"Come down, Sherlock."
And then, Sherlock took a single step forward and placed himself next to John on the rooftop.
The doors behind them burst open, the officer with the megaphone, Lestrade, pushing John to one side and grabbing Sherlock by the shoulders, looking at him with a bewildered expression. The others pushed John aside even more, firing questions at the man who didn't respond to any of them.
"What the hell was that, Sherlock?" Lestrade was saying as he tried to regain his breath. "I'll have you know someone actually punched Anderson, but you had just disappeared. Molly called to say you were near St. Bart's on the verge of a breakdown and then we get another call saying there's someone about to jump off the bloody roof-"
"It won't happen again, Detective Inspector," Sherlock replied as calmly as he could. Lestrade sighed, practically deflating.
"Better not," he mumbled. "Come on, mate, let's go and talk. Your brother was about ready to send helicopters to come and get you off the roof, did you know that?" Lestrade continued a steady stream of conversation as the group slowly moved off the rooftop.
John watched the sunset for a few long moments before walking after them. It was only until he got back to the ground floor that he realized he had left his cane on the roof.
It had been almost six months since John had encountered the man on the roof, and life had meandered back into dull normality. He still worked as a doctor, patients still continued coming in. He had only spoken to Harry once in a vain attempt to convince her to go to rehab, spoken to his parents twice about Harry refusing to go to rehab, met a nice young lady named Mary and while they weren't dating he kinda hoped they would be-
"John Watson?"
John paused in the hallway and turned around. Behind him stood the man from the roof, wearing the same black coat, same scarf. At least now he seemed to be far more put together, and John could find no trace of the desperation he had seen before.
"That's me, yeah," he replied. A pause. "Sherlock, right?" Sherlock nodded.
"I, ah... I wanted to thank you. For, um... you know. Helping me. On the... the, ah, roof. Thank you, for that. Really. And my brother isn't here but I imagine... he would probably like to thank you as well."
John's mind briefly flew back to a well-dressed man in a suit handing him a very large check with the word "recompense" and nodded.
"It was nothing," he replied, shrugging awkwardly; with one arm being used to lean heavily on his cane and the other in pain on frequent occasions it made it difficult to shrug. "I'm a doctor, I'm supposed to help people."
"Yes, but you saved my life. Most people wouldn't do that." John looked at him. "They wouldn't."
The two stood in a bit of an awkward silence, not really looking at each other but trying to look at the other person without looking like they were looking at them.
"Do you-"
"Would you-"
They started talking at the same time, quickly stopped, and looked at one another. John made a go ahead motion with his hands, and the taller man shrugged.
"You're a retired army doctor, correct?" He nodded in reply. "You have a job, well-paying, but your clothes are old, you don't spend very much on yourself, which probably means you're still living in a flat supplied by the army. Correct?" Another nod, although he wasn't sure where this was going. "I know a place in London, it's a relatively large flat, but I can't afford it myself. Two people could, however."
It took a moment for this to process. "I talked you out of suicide six months ago, we meet once, and you're... asking about a flat share?"
Sherlock shrugged yet again. "If you want to put it that way, yes, I am. Do you mind the violin? I play the violin when I'm thinking, it annoys some people."
"I don't mind, but-"
"I'll see you tomorrow, then." He turned and started walking out, down the hallway, and he was nearly around the corner before John called after him.
"Could you at least tell me where I'm supposed to go?"
Sherlock Holmes leaned back around the corner with a small smirk.
"221B Baker Street."