Hi readers! This is the second chapter of my story and I hope you enjoy. Constructive criticism appreciated Xx

New Aquaintances

Sherlock Holmes was in the mortuary. In front of him lay a body. A dead body. But there was no point getting all sad about it. People die every day and this is just another one of those people. He didn't see why it was such a fuss. This body was fresh in and had belonged to a male, mid fifties, overweight, died of smoking relarelated illnesses, played rugby semi professionally until he sustained an injury and enjoys young adult fiction novels. He shook that last detail out of his head.

Sherlock unbuttoned the cuffs of his shirt, then rolled them up to just above his elbow. He took the riding crop from the cold metal table and looked at his watch. 11:29 am. Sherlock raised the riding crop above his head and brought it down across the mans bare back. Again. And Again. And again. By the time he had finished it was 11:32 and there were red slashed all over the mans back. Some had opened wounds while others remained scarlet marks, though none had bled more than a dark ooze of blood. The corpse was at least six hours old, meaning the blood would mostly have clotted by now. That ruined the scientific accuracy of the experiment a little, but it was illegal to murder people, ever for science.

He turned to his assistant, Molly Hooper. She was twenty five or twenty seven (he often deleted useless information to make room for more important things), had had little sleep the previous night and was thinking of asking someone on a date today. Unhelpful deductions often popped into him mind without them meaning to.

"I want to know what bruises form in the next twenty minutes, a man's alibi depends on it," Sherlock said while removing his gloves, speaking quickly. He always spoke fast as there were much better things to do than talk.

"Sure," said Molly, and added, " I was wondering if when you finish you might like to -"

"You're wearing lipstick. You weren't wearing lipstick before," Sherlock stated.

"Oh... um yeah... I was... trying something new," Molly stammered.

"Anyway, you were saying?"

"I was wondering if you wanted to get coffee." Molly rushed before he could change the subject agian.

"Black, two sugars please." Sherlock was already walking out of the mortuary and into the lab next door.

"Ok..." sighed Molly, still smiling, but a little sadly. This was the third time he had brushed her off this week. It wasn't his fault he couldn't take hints thought Molly. It's just the way he is.

But Sherlock had already forgotten his conversation with her, as in walked a man he had already seen today. People didn't often come back to see him again, especially in the same day. He tended to make enemies easily. But even this distracted him from who next walked into the messy lab.

For once, more than deductions flooded into Sherlock's brain. He noticed how he muttered "a bit different from my day..." as he entered, (suggesting trained as a doctor). He noticed that the man was at least half a head shorter than him and that he had no tan past his sleeves (abroad but not sunbathing). He noticed that his early greying hair was swept back across his head in an elegant wave, but that it had only been allowed to grow longer recently (military) and than he held a walking stick but did not ask to sit (psychosomatic?).

He noticed his eyes were almond shaped and were a pale grey with a darker line around the outside. He also had dark circles bellow the eyes as promenant as bruises (nightmares). He noticed that his jawline was rounded and that he had wrinkles around the eyes, although not in a way that made him look old. He noticed how he wore a watch in his dominant hand, hiding the name written there (either he has not met his soulmate or uncomfortable with who they are). There were many other things he noticed, of course, he wasn't slipping, but all were overwhelmed by one.

He noticed how handsome he was.

This thought did not alarm Sherlock, as he had known he was gay for many years, most of his life in fact. No one knew the gender of there soulmates, and just because the name was masculine, it was offensive to asume that was their current gender. But he knew his soulmate was male, just as he knew he was gay. However, this guest in his lab did surprise him; he couldn't remember the last time he was attracted to someone.

He was aware he was staring a little, so sat down to examine a specimen at the microscope.

"Mike," he said, staring through the lense at the clump of mud he had take from a crime scene. "Can I borrow your phone? Mine has no signal."

" What's wrong with the landline?" asked Mike, walking over to the old fashioned telephone that hung on the wall.

"I prefer to text." Sherlock said simply.

"Sorry, it's in my coat downstairs."

"Hear," John interrupted. "Use mine."

"Oh. Um... Thank you." Sherlock said. He was not used to kindness, and was surprised this man had offered something to him so readily; he won't be so kind once he gets to know me he thought. He got up to take the phone from him, and saw it was a new model, but with lots of scratches and an engraving on the back. There were all sorts of things he could say about this. All the dots began to join up in his head.

"This is an old friend of mine, John Watson..." If Mike continued talking after this, Sherlock did not hear it. John Watson. He was glad he had rolled his shirt sleeve back down, as the the word written there would have been clearly visible in a shade a few darker than his skin tone. Written there was the name John.

But he didn't let himself become hopeful. There were approximately 5, 417, 065 people called John in the US alone, let alone the rest of the world. Not that be had looked it up or anything.

He continued to type his message into the phone, but was barley thinking, barley breathing. Stop getting your hopes up. Just stop it.

"Afghanistan or Iraq," Sherlock said in as normal a voice he could manage. He wanted to impress John. If this really was his soulmate, he didn't want to get off on the wrong foot. Not that there was any possibility if him being his soulmate. He has been let down too many times to believe that.

"Sorry?" John replied, his voice steady, though Sherlock suspected he was more unnerved than he was letting on. He looked over at Mike, but only got a mysterious smile in return.

"Which was it, Afghanistan or Iraq?"

"Afghanistan. Sorry how did yo-"

Molly had just returned from her trip to the cafe down stairs, holding two cardboard cups. "Ah Molly, coffee, thank you. What happened to the lipstick?" Sherlock questioned. Normally he did not care about this sort of stuff, but he wanted to at least seem nice in from of this new acquaintance who had his soulmate's name. Plus, it was a good distraction.

"It wasn't working for me," she replied, handing over one of the cups.

"Really? I thought it was a big improvement. Your mouths too small now." One look at Molly's face told him this was the wrong thing to say if he was being nice.

" OK..." she said again, turning around and sighing.

"How do you feel about the violin?" Sherlock asked out of the blue, looking directly at John.

" Sorry, what?" John said, his grey eyes meeting Sherlock's tri coloured ones.

"I often play the violin when I'm thinking. Sometimes I don't speak for days on end. Would that bother you? Potential flatmates should know the worst about each other."

A long pause followed, with the two men never breaking eye contact. Finally John turned round and said to Mike, "Did you tell him about me?"

"Not a word," Mike answered, a grin on his face.

"Then who said anything about flatmates?"

"I did," Sherlock said plainly, a faint smirk playing at the corners of his lips. He began to put on his coat, a dark blue belstaff. "I told Mike this morning that I must be a difficult man to find a flatmate for. Now here he is, with a man clearly just home from military in Afghanistan. It wasn't a difficult leap." Be then proceeded to tie a blue silk scarf around his neck.

"How did you know about Afghanistan?" John asked again.

"I've got myself an eye on a nice little place in central London. Together we might be able to afford it. We'll meet there tomorrow at 7pm. Sorry, got to dash, I think I left my riding crop in the mortuary."

"Is that it?" John said, raising his left hand to accept his phone back.

"Is that what?"

"We've only just met and we're going to look at a flat."

"Problem?" Sherlock asked, puzzled, cocking his head in a bird like manner.

"We don't know a thing about each other. I don't know where we're meeting. I don't even know you're name."

Sherlock paused before looking into John's eyes again and taking a deep breath. "I know you're an army doctor who's been delivered home from service in 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 alcoholic, more likely because he just walked out on his wife. And I know that your therapist thinks your limp is psychosomatic, quite correctly I'm afraid. That's enough to be going on with, dont you think?" All that in one breath.

He walked out the door before popping his head round it again. "The name is Sherlock Holmes and the address is 221b Bakers Street." He winked before leaving and walked quickly down the corridor and out of sight.

John looked at Mike in astonishment, and Mike said "Yeah, he's always like that."

What Mike nor John knew was that Sherlock was actually leaning against the wall just round the corner, trying to make sense of the feelings inside him he barely understood, feelings he had not felt in a long, long time. Feelings he thought he had pushed away for ever.

Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed this second chapter and there are more coming very soon! Xx