Chapter Text
John held fast to the idea that being invalided out of the RAMC was the worst possible thing to happen to him. He hadn’t counted on what it would be like once he’d returned to England and had to figure out how he was going to provide for himself on the meager rations of a military pension. He never once thought about how everyone he had associated with, relied on, before he’d left would have nothing to do with him; how his sister would be ten times worse when he returned than when he’d first told her he would be deploying to Afghanistan. It never once hit him how lonely and pathetic his life would be without his military or surgeon career to carry him through. He hadn’t realized how thoroughly devoted he’d become to those aspects of himself; hadn’t deliberated how little time he’d spent developing any other part of his person. Everything he had, all that he was, had disappeared when he’d awoken and been informed that he’d no longer be of use to the RAMC.
“I know you're an Army doctor, and you've been invalided home from Afghanistan. You've got a brother 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 recently walked out on his wife, and I know your therapist thinks your limp's psychosomatic, quite correctly, I'm afraid. That's enough to be going on with, don't you think? The name is Sherlock Holmes, and the address is 221B Baker Street. Afternoon.”
When left with something of such an intriguing nature, it becomes near impossible to let it go. At least, for one Captain John H. Watson, M.D. Had he met Sherlock Holmes in any other place, in any other manner, he would have written him off as a self-righteous prat and left it at that. As it were, he couldn’t not show up at 221B Baker Street. He felt compelled to. And the adventure? Oh, the glorious adrenaline rush, the intoxication of intellectual take-out of such an exquisite nature: it was brilliant, absolutely extraordinary.
John’s life since that day had been anything but boring. Every day was a new adventure, whether he was playing ‘what’s in the fridge today’, identifying cause of death on a corpse or chasing after Sherlock as he chased after a murder. The days passed in a cacophony of investigations, chases and the occasional shift at the clinic where John met the first woman he’d been interested in since before he deployed to Afghanistan.
Sarah was wonderful. Nowhere near the level of Sherlock, but she was cute and sweet and easy to talk to (unless you spent ninety percent of your time talking about your brilliantly mad flat mate). That relationship didn’t last long, but if he were forced to choose between his life with Sherlock and a nice, normal life with a possible wife and child(ren), he’d choose Sherlock every time. He’d rather his eccentric, seldom predictable flat mate to the tedium of a ‘normal’ existence.
John had lived comfortably alongside Sherlock for six months when he finally figured out what it was that made the genius different from everyone else he knew. He’d been sitting on the couch enjoying a cup of tea and his latest bookstore purchase (Musashi by Eiji Yoshikawa; a recommendation of one of the few RAMC buddies he still kept in touch with) when Sherlock flounced into the living room from his bedroom and threw himself onto the couch with no consideration for anyone/thing other than himself. He pillowed his head on John’s thigh, let out a content sigh and closed his eyes. John stared down at him a moment before rolling his eyes in fond exasperation and turning back to his book. Before too long he realized the fingers of his free hand had drifted down and were twirling Sherlock’s dark curls. Sherlock didn’t seem to mind, in fact he pushed his head up into John’s head and his lips parted slightly as John brushed his fingers over his scalp. John smiled a little at that and turned back to his book, letting his fingers wander through a jungle of curls. He jolted when his thumb brushed against a bump, his eyes flashing down to Sherlock who lay looking back at him with wide eyes and an even paler face. He almost looked as though he were afraid.
John set the book to the side and placed both hands in Sherlock’s hair, his fingers searching out the bump once more. When he finally came across it, he parted the strands to better see what he was dealing. He’d seriously thought Sherlock had been injured in some way, but when he got a good look, his breath caught in his throat and his entire body stilled in shock.
Horns. Sherlock has horns. Sherlock fucking Holmes has fucking horns.
John stared at Sherlock, stared at his horns. Everything was still, the world seemed to have been placed on mute. Slowly Sherlock rose from his position, John’s hands falling away without protest, his head still tilted down as Sherlock pulled himself into a sitting position beside him.
“I can explain.”
John tilted his head to show Sherlock he was listening but still didn’t lift it to look at him. He waited patiently for Sherlock to begin, his mind a mess. This wasn’t normal. Nothing about Sherlock’s ever been normal and you’ve never had a problem with it, a small part of John’s brain reminded him.
“John, I am a demon.”