John knew that keeping his gun in the drawer next to his bed was a stupid idea, but he didn't care. If any one of his patients had come in to see him and they mentioned that they were keeping a gun next to their bed, John would have done whatever he could to make sure they moved it. He probably would have been more aggressive than that, if he was being perfectly honest with himself. He would do what he could to ensure that his patient got rid of the gun altogether. Knowing this, John was able to consider just what he should and shouldn't say to his therapist.
He knew that Ella thought he was full of shit, but she was too professional to be able to call him out on it. All she could do was attempt to steer him in the right direction so he would open up just a bit more. He knew all she wanted to do was help, but there was nothing she could do and John hated the woman for that.
Still has trust issues. Of course John had trust issues. She would never know why he had trust issues, but he did. John wasn't in love with Major Sholto anymore. He had spent many weeks in a morphine haze after he was flown home, and through this whole haze he had cried. There were days that tears were leaking out of his eyes because he was in pain, and there were days where it was because his heart was breaking. He never cried with any noise, though. Each sob was marked with a silent hitch in his chest that could have easily been mistaken for a quick breath. It had taken two months, but soon John no longer thought of Sholto. To be fair, he didn't think of anyone, but he was no longer heartbroken and angrier with the man than anything else for how things had gone. He then was angry at himself for being angry because they had agreed on just casual sex, but Sholto didn't have to be so accommodating to John after his panic attack and miniature sexuality crisis. He was angry only very rarely, and that was awful, but it was better than numb.
Harry came to visit him once, but he had become so distressed that his blood pressure had spiked and his stitches had ruptured. He had ended up back in surgery. Harry had been drunk and shouldn't have been allowed in the hospital in the first place. She was forbidden by the hospital staff from visiting him again while he was there because of how badly her first and only visit had gone. She sent John the phone that Clara had gotten for her on her last birthday. She wrote in the note that she and Clara were splitting up and that she hoped that John would be in touch.
John spent five months in a military hospital recovering from his injuries. The doctors and physical therapists were baffled by his inability to walk because there was no injury there. John was just frustrated by the fact that his shoulder was at least improving while his leg, which had nothing wrong with it, was still lame. Eventually they discharged him from the hospital, and the Army gave him an honorable discharge because though they appreciated his service, there was no use for a broken surgeon anywhere in Afghanistan.
With a heavy heart, John found a cheap bedsit and ambled around London, hoping that some part of the city would blow a little bit of life into him. It was on the day that Ella had written still has trust issues on her notepad that John was limping through the park when a voice that registered as distantly familiar in his head called his name.
Mike Stamford couldn't have known that John had gotten shot, but he was walking around with a cane. He hadn't had that when they were in medical school or at any other point where they had seen each other after they had wrapped up there. They had gotten coffee, giving them an excuse to have an extended conversation with each other. Then Mike had mentioned a flatmate and John couldn't help it. His curiosity – and the desire to go anywhere other than London – got the better of him and he asked Mike a question he hoped he wouldn't regret later.
"Who was the first?"
Mike laughed as if he had some great secret, then he brought John back to the hospital where they had studied together and where Mike – and this potential flatmate – now worked. Instead of heading to an office, as John suspected they would, Mike brought him to a lab.
The lab was fairly dark when John and Mike entered it. Mike had mentioned that the person he was about to introduce him to was a bit eccentric with his work and was working on an experiment that worked with the reaction of different light sources with acrylic paint. He had asked that all overhead power sources be cut off of to that particular lab while he was conducting this experiment, so the only source of light was from small lamps that cast different hues around the room. The man asked for Mike's phone, and when that wasn't available, John offered his. The man thanked him and reached out for the phone.
When the man made eye contact with John as the phone was placed in his hand, his eyes widened and then shut as if he were in pain. "Are you alright?" John asked, his medical background getting the better of him.
The man scrubbed his eyes and squinted at John, almost confused. "Yes," he said, almost puzzled. Then recognition seemed to strike him and he squinted at the screen as if the light was painful for him. He rattled off some information about John that no one other than his doctors should have known. But at the end of it all Mike had just looked at John and shook his head in an almost affectionate way.
Sherlock Holmes at 221B Baker Street. The name and address danced through John's mind all afternoon and night. He looked up the man to ensure that he wasn't contemplating moving in with a serial killer or some other crazed lunatic. After looking at Sherlock Holmes's website, he was fairly certain that the man wasn't a serial killer, but based on the posts there and the text that the man had sent from John's phone he was reasonably convinced that his potential flatmate wasn't entirely sane. John also reflected on what Sherlock Holmes had said to him when they had first been introduced about his worst qualities. If the man was a good violin player, John wouldn't mind him playing. He may mind if it was the middle of the night, but the violin could also help him after a nightmare. As for the not talking for days on end, well. John had gotten into that habit himself. He didn't speak outside of therapy, and his conversation with Mike had been the most extensive interaction he had had with another person in a very long time.
When John got into bed, he was prepared for two things. The first was a restless night filled with nightmares that would jolt him awake and leave him hoarse from screaming and crying in a mixture of shame and fear after. The second was that he was probably going to decide to move into a flat with a complete stranger who was probably a bit of a lunatic.
Sherlock's experiment had gone very well. The paint chips hadn't had any excessive interference from a light source other than the one assigned to that particular piece of green. He was confident that within half an hour he would be able to text Lestrade and confirm who the killer was.
Lestrade came over to his flat nearly every day. Sherlock very nearly resented this, because Sherlock hated the idea of having a minder. Still, relapse was something that his brother was concerned about and Lestrade was terrified about. He and Mycroft lived in a flat that was situated so Sherlock's was on both of their routes to work, so every morning one of them (more often than not Lestrade) would pop in to see how Sherlock was doing. If Sherlock was clearly in danger of relapsing (or clearly hiding the fact that he was in danger of relapsing), Lestrade would bring him into work and dig out a cold case for him. Sherlock had been clean for five years when he met John.
He had been thinking about the coffee that Molly had promised him when the door swung open and two people came into the lab. He recognized the gait of the first man as that of Mike Stamford, but he didn't recognized the second one. Mike must have found him a flatmate.
The flatmate offered him the use of his phone, and it happened when the man placed the phone in his hand and Sherlock looked up into his eyes.
He had heard tales of people being temporarily blinded when they met their soul mate. Sherlock supposed this would have happened if he hadn't made the lab as dark as possible. He blinked a few times and had to squint. Still, he knew what was happening. The man stood in front of him – army doctor, went to school with Mike, discharged recently because of a gunshot wound to his left shoulder, psychosomatic limp, alcoholic brother going through a divorce – was unquestionably his soul mate, and he was not reacting.
He waltzed out of the lab looking for his riding crop, and all the while his heart was sinking. He should be rejoicing because he could see color, but instead he was agonizing because the man who was clearly his soul mate obviously couldn't see color when they looked at each other. As he fetched his riding crop, Sherlock had an idea. Instead of heading for his flat, he went to King's Cross and caught the next train going to the station closet to the village his parents lived in.
His mother was thrilled when he called her and told her that he was at the train station. She fussed over the fact that he didn't give her any warning, but said she would send his father along and she would work on preparing some food for him. Sherlock didn't mention that he had eaten only two days ago and didn't need the sustenance. His parents were the only two people he would eat for.
His father embraced him when he pulled up at the station. "Didn't even bring a change of clothes, Sherlock, good Lord," the man fretted. "Not to worry, we have some things here for you."
"I'm only down for the evening," Sherlock tried to say, but the look his father gave him was severe.
"If you think your mother is going to let you ride a train back late into town, you're dimmer than we all thought you were. Tell me a bit about the cases you've been working on. When your mother last spoke to Mycroft he said you were helping Greg with something to do with a corpse secured to a ceiling or something like that." Sherlock grinned and began to talk about what he had solved earlier. His father was nowhere near as bright as the rest of the family, but he was genuinely interested in what his sons were doing. If he didn't understand how Sherlock had reached a conclusion he was more than willing to ask about it, but he also knew how much this annoyed Sherlock and did his best to keep the questions to a minimum. By the time Sherlock had told him about the case and the arrest that Greg had made while he was on the train, they were pulling up to the house where Sherlock and Mycroft had grown up.
Mummy dashed out when she heard the car pull up and pulled her younger child into a tight embrace. Sherlock accepted the gesture, knowing that there was nothing that he could do to stop her.
"You haven't been eating again, have you love?" Mummy asked as she pulled back and looked at him. "Don't even try to dignify that with a lie, Sherlock. I made lamb for dinner and there are some potatoes in the oven right now. You're eating two helpings of everything on the table, young man."
The table was set and everything was ready to eat when they went inside. They sat and began to eat. Mummy ate slowly, keeping a watchful eye on Sherlock to ensure that he ate like a normal person. After he had started on his prescribed second plate, Father asked him what brought him out to the country on such short notice.
"I need some advice." Sherlock mumbled these words towards his plate so he didn't have to see whatever expressions his parents wore.
"What is it, love?" Mummy asked.
"I want to move out of my current flat and into a new one, but it's out of my budget so I started looking for a flatmate. I mentioned this to a doctor who I sometimes work with at St. Bart's earlier today, and not two hours later he brings someone in who he knew while they were at school." He stopped, trying to think of a good way to say this, but when he failed Sherlock just blurted out, "When we made eye contact I started seeing color but he made no indication of showing a change. He's definitely my soul mate, but he's color blind."
Neither of his parents said anything. They looked at each other, and Father, who was always the more emotional one of the pair, had eyes that were just a bit wet. "I'm so sorry, Sherlock," he said thickly. "I don't understand why this whole business of soul mates has never been easy for you."
"I don't either. I don't even know if I like him. He's said only a few words to me, and I was so flustered by seeing color and him not being able to see it that I began saying whatever I thought and I think I scared him a bit. Apparently not too much though because he's going to Baker Street look at the flat with me tomorrow evening."
"How did he not notice that you were seeing color?" Mummy asked. "Most people can't open their eyes when the change happens."
"I was in a lab with very little light," Sherlock explained. "It hurt a bit and I'm certain that I was squinting a little bit because he asked if my eyes were alright, but I didn't want to scare him away by saying that I had started seeing color when he looked at me when he clearly wasn't."
"That's a wise choice," his father agreed.
"But what am I supposed to do?" Sherlock moaned. "I don't want something to happen to him. What if he decides that I'm too difficult to live with and he just leaves without knowing that it's me? What if he tries to find someone else but gets frustrated because he can't find the person he's looking for? What if I hide it for too long and gets angry because I kept something so important a secret from him and then he leaves?" Sherlock was pulling at his hair by the end of his rant and his eyes were darting wildly from one parent to the other.
"Sherlock," Mummy sighed. "You're right not to tell him, but you never know. The two of you may start to live together and realize that you're one of those matches that aren't meant to be. I know you haven't seen many of those, but there are some people whose soul mates are incompatible with them for some odd reason or another. I know that you're impulsive and Lord knows I would never try to change that about you sweetheart, but unfortunately this is just one of those situations where you have to wait a little while to see any results."
"She's right," his father agreed. "I know that I don't want you to get hurt again, and after last time I'm more inclined to tell you to take things slowly. Get to know the man, and when you feel the time is right, tell him."
"How am I supposed to know when that is?" Sherlock asked.
His father shrugged and looked between his wife and his son. "You're the smart ones here. You two figure it out."
Sherlock wasn't completely satisfied with the answers he got from his parents (or lack of answers, depending on how you looked at it), but he felt better the next morning when he returned to London with a bag full of home cooked food from his mother to put in the refrigerator that was on the second floor of 221B Baker Street.
A/N: Hey y'all! This is the first chapter with switching points of view, which is incidentally the first one that I considered splitting into two parts. The chapter count is at 16 right now, but that could change depending on how I'm feeling on a day-to-day basis. Thanks so much for all of the kind support I've been getting for this story! It was one of those things that was easy to outline but a bear to finish. Now that I'm finally putting it up, I'm thrilled y'all are liking it! Please keep the feedback coming! It warms my heart each time I hear from one of you! xoxoxo