Chapter 3: First meeting or reunion
'Nothing ever happens to him' it was true and not in a good way. John was back from Afghanistan and alone. He couldn't go to Harry and ask her for help. All his friends were still part of the Army or dead. John couldn't decide what was worse. He soul had gone lost somewhere between that hot day when a bullet had touched him and arriving back home. Although home was not the way he felt for London anymore. The weather was always bad, dark like his mood. His flat, if that was what you wanted to call a one-room apartment, was depressing. All this did not help with his own depression and the worst part was that his gun was looking more attractive every day.
John was still here, he hadn't eaten his gun the previous night. The heavy piece of metal lay safe in his desk drawer. Where it belonged except if he changed his mind later in the day. It wouldn't change, nothing ever changed in his life. He had never thought that a simple call of his name would change everything.
Mike, good old Mike, had a bit more around his hips but still smiling like in the old days was the first one he talked to in a long time. Doctors and psychologist didn't count; they got paid for talking with you. Like shop keepers, your landlord and the guy who drove the taxi. John didn't want to talk to him at first but he followed his old friend to St. Bart's to meet with someone he had never met for a potential flat share. Ridiculous. As if this person would just stand up and say "hey yes lets share a flat". "Stop being so sarcastic", he ruffled himself.
The outside of the building hadn't changed much, only the inside. New labs now with modern equipment and everywhere young people full of dreams and hope and a future. "Don't be so negative, John, maybe he is a nice guy who can't afford a flat in London like you. Although he better not be like you."
The man they met was nothing like John had imagined. The short look into his eyes let spark something familiar in John as if he had met him before. But a man like that would have left an imprint he couldn't have forgotten. For the first time in ages he felt deep inside his soul a connection to another person. Strange because he had only met him ten seconds before but somehow he knew this stranger could be trusted. He could trust him.
This unexpected meeting lead to a friendship that probably saved his life not that John would ever tell a single soul that he had been on the way home to kill himself. Sometimes he suspected that Sherlock did have an idea of what he had stopped that day. Maybe that was the reason for his behavior during their first meeting. He would never know.
He was thinking back at that day and smiling as he and Sherlock walked through the park to get a late dinner at Angelo's.
"Why are you smiling like that?" Sherlock asked as he caught John smiling by a look to his side. Eyes like the stormy sea John thought not to the first time.
"Nothing, just looking forward to our dinner." He was still smiling as they walked together into their favorite restaurant.
The skinny teenager with the drug overdose was only a vague shadow in his memory, nearly forgotten after fifteen years of life. Like the angel that had saved them both.