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John Watson hates being alone.
It’s one of the reasons he takes up hiking, for the feeling of oneness with nature that accompanies the sport.
His therapist, Ella, claims it’ll help him spiritually, while his own mother says it’s all a bunch of bull.
Nevertheless, when a park ranger trainee warns him of the possibility of a storm, he doesn’t turn back. He considers this his precious free time and he won’t back away just because someone’s trying to “keep him safe”. He’s too stubborn for that.
Instead of following the boy’s instructions, he grips his cane tighter and continues down his mountain trail.
John considers it his trail because none of the other hikers ever attempt to go up the mountain through this particular route.
Apparently, in years before, people who decided to brave the difficult climbing path never returned.
But it’s a well-known fact that John Watson is not only stubborn, but also extremely brave.
As the ex-military medic trudges on, he notices the quickly darkening sky. Frowning, he glances down at his wristwatch.
Less than a second later, he raises his gaze forward to find himself surrounded by darkness.
Not possible, John thinks, it’s only 4pm.
Terror grips his heart in its cruel, unforgiving hands and the feeling reminds him disturbingly of the butts of rebel guns and sting of grainy sand.
John turns back to face where he’d begun hiking to find that the muddy dirt trail he’s so used to staring down at is nowhere to be soon.
His tightly clenched fist no longer trembles, a sure sign of his stressful situation.
Having no clue what to do, John begins to limp in the approximate direction in which he first entered the trail. Maybe when he returns to the Members’ Support Desk, someone will explain what exactly is going on.
He doesn’t get very far before he hears the faint rustling of leaves disturbing the eerie silence of the night (or so John believes it to be, seeing as it’s completely dark outside).
He freezes, oddly aware of his surroundings.
The rustling noise ends, but when John opens his eyes from blinking in relief, he realizes that something is very wrong.
John turns his head in every direction it will turn to but all he sees his black.
The moon, he thinks in utterly confused horror, it’s gone.
He knows that something unnatural is going on; something very out of the norm, for the moon sheds no light. And John always sees the moon, even on the longer hiking expeditions when night would fall before he returned to the park office.
The moon is always up.
Without thinking, the battered soldier tears into a run, his pack hanging off his back as his velocity increases.
As he speeds past the trees he cannot see, he notices a light, radiating from his left.
Unfortunately, he decided to turn his head while still running.
John Watson catches hardly a glimpse of the tall, white, almost glowing, suit-clad humanoid figure before he hits the ground.
*
When he opens his eyes, he’s in a hospital.
White walls, linens, and plastics surround him and at first, it all seems much too bright.
“John,” a soft voice whispers.
The female voice echoes in his skull, not resembling the husky rumble in his dreams at all.
When he can turn his head and open his eyes without wincing, he finds Sarah at his side.
“We were all so worried, John!” she’s speaking. “I told you that taking up hiking wouldn’t benefit you in the least.”
“What happened?” John croaks, reaching his hand to his bedside to shift him upright.
“The rangers found you this morning, lying on the ground. Apparently you tripped over a pothole and fainted from stress,” she pauses before squeezing the hand in her already tight grip. “Thank god you’re alright.”
John frowns, he doesn’t remember tripping. In fact, he doesn’t remember anything from last night at all. “Shouldn’t you be at work?”
“Well, yes, but I came over to the hospital during my lunch break,” she says, smiling.
“I’m fine, Sarah,” John says to soothe her worry, knowing he’s not being very honest at all. “I’m probably getting released today anyway, go back to the clinic.”
“Alright, but since you claim you’re fine, I’m expecting you at work in a few days’ time,” Sarah murmurs, pouring him a glass of water before leaving.
“And no more hiking, I mean it.”
*
His water pitcher has gone empty and the button to alert his nurse has stopped working.
John sighs before slowly rising from his hospital bed. He’s only staying tonight because the head doctor says they need to keep him for observation.
Opening his door, he peeks into the hallway. Deserted.
Slowly, he begins to inch down the hall, turning his head from side to side for any sign of Angelica, or so his nurse’s tag says.
Suddenly, he feels a chill go down his back. The hallway seems emptier and colder all at once. The hair on his neck rises as his palms go rigid.
John Watson turns around hesitantly to find a tall, pale, figure staring at him from all the way down the hall.
His night-black suit contrasts startlingly from his long pale body. Unsurprisingly, it’s neither his height nor his ghostly paleness that shakes John; it’s his completely featureless face.
John Watson does not scream, in fact, he stands straight at full height with his eyes staring forward in a military fashion and his mouth set in a grim line. Mortification rules his body. Nevertheless, he stands strong while his world turns on its axis.
“John?” he turns at the sound of Angelica’s American accent. “What are you doing outside of your room?”
John spares her only a glance, but when he turns back to where the person-creature-thing that had appeared, he finds nothing.
*
He doesn’t return hiking that week. Sarah doesn’t let him.
*
The next time John sees it, he’s in Tesco.
It’s been two days since the hospital discharged him, but he can’t shake the feeling that somebody’s watching him.
He’s walking across the aisles with a package of tea bags in hand when he glances through the appliances aisle and finds the faceless thing staring back at him.
John stops in his tracks and instead of standing in awe this time, he scans his opponent.
A solid 15 feet separate them but John tries his best to size him up. Once again looming above John in his immaculate black suit, the pale figure stands there, inactive.
He’s… John furrows his brows at the thought, he’s not a threat. It comes as a surprise to him, but going by the figure’s body language, there is nothing threatening about it.
When he blinks, it’s gone.
John makes a bee-line for the register.
He doesn’t understand why he’s the only one that can see the thing, but it makes him nervous. When he first saw it, Angelica came across them and made not a single comment or facial expression in its direction.
John shakes his head as he exits the store. He cannot be imagining this, he just cannot.
*
That night, John actually dreams.
There are no bloody bodies strewn across a sunny, sandy desert. This time, there is only Sherlock.
John doesn’t know how he knows the man’s name, but as soon as he closes his eyes, he’s there.
“Hello, John,” he says. He’s tall and white, wearing a black suit. An exact replica of the figure he’d seen in Tesco and the hospital. “It’s nice to finally get to… Communicate with you.”
John blinks and scopes his surroundings.
The room is larger than John’s own dingy flat. He finds himself sitting down on a comfy, well-used chair. A Union Jack pillow lies across his lap. A mirror hangs above the unlit fireplace and Sherlock looms in the corner. Newspapers, books, notes, and other paraphernalia lie in piles around the room.
John lifts his gaze from the unfamiliar room to Sherlock.
“What am I doing here?”
“Ooh, good, very good, you didn’t even have to ask who I was,” Sherlock sounds gleeful but his faceless head hangs expressionless.
“I know who you are, you’re the wanker that’s been stalking me,” John accuses as he gets comfortable in his chair; they’re going to be here for a while, he can tell.
“Stalking? No, no, I prefer the term ‘observing’,” he murmurs, interest making itself evident in his expressive voice rather than his haunting figure.
John shakes his head, disbelief in the situation evident on his face. “Seriously, why me? How do you know me? What is it that you want?”
“How do you know I want something from you, John?” Sherlock asks curiously.
John raises an eyebrow. “You displayed no threatening behavior today or in the hospital last week. You made no move towards me and you haven’t tried to communicate with me- Err, not until tonight that is-“
“And?” Sherlock says, his deep voice oddly excited.
“Well, if you just wanted to kill me out of sheer boredom or some sort of undeserved revenge, you would have done it by now…” John stares at his featureless face in confusion. “So, explain to me, how do you know me?”
John jumps in his seat at the burst of deep-throated chuckles that seem to emanate throughout the room. “Oh, you are interesting, John Watson.”
His laughter disappears as his voice drops to a low monotone. “In answer to your questions, I do not know you. At least, not personally, not yet. But I know you’re an army doctor and you’ve been invalided home from Iraq or 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 recently walked out on his wife. And I know that your therapist thinks your limp’s psychosomatic, quite correctly I’m afraid.That’s enough to be going on with, don’t you think?”
His rambling comes to a stop and John Watson can only sit in awe before the man who’s succeeded in retelling the most important points of his adult life. “How-“
“Did I do it?” Sherlock finishes with a smirk that John doesn’t have to see to believe.
John nods numbly.
Sherlock then proceeds to explain his deductions.
*
“Wow,” John breathes.
The figure’s head angles lower, as if attempting to stare at John’s face with non-existent eyes. “You think so?”
“Brilliant. Absolutely extraordinary,” John murmurs shocked from the amazingness of the creature- no, man- before him.
“That’s not what people normally say.”
“What do people normally say?”
“‘Piss off’.”
Their laughter echoes in the empty flat.
*
John sees him again the next day on his way to the clinic.
He’s standing across the street when John turns his head to the right.
John waves.
Sherlock remains still as the doctor turns the block.
*
“So, why do you look like that?” John asks on their second night spent in each other’s company.
“Oh, I should shift to a form more suited to your environment,” Sherlock says, remaining in the corner of the room.
John cocks his head at the word shift, and blinks only to find an entirely different person standing in Sherlock’s place. “What-“
“It’s me John,” he says. The man who struts to the other side of the flat and tosses his thin frame on to the sofa looks back at John after settling comfortably.
John doesn’t say anything and instead inspects the attractive man before him in closer detail.
*
After a while, John gets used to Sherlock’s presence in his everyday life.
He isn’t surprised when he glances up in his bathroom mirror to find Sherlock – with unmanageably curly, dark locks, sharp, pale eyes, and cupid-bow lips, staring at him from behind.
He learns to hide the fact that his attention has been stolen by Sherlock’s ubiquitous appearance in the corner of the room during his lunch break with Sarah.
He forces himself not to tell Ella a word about Sherlock, in fear that she’ll send him to some loony bin.
And perhaps most importantly, John decides to stop dating. He tells himself it’s because he doesn’t want to disturb someone with his stories about the extraterrestrial creature that’s taken over most of his life, but he knows better. Deep inside, he knows.
Despite the constant disturbances Sherlock creates, John can’t bring it in himself to ward him away. He tells himself it’s because he’s afraid of what will happen if he offends the madman.
He knows better.
Deep inside, he knows.
*
“So, what exactly are you?” John says through a bite of English muffins he found in Sherlock’s near barren pantry.
He catches the glance Sherlock throws him from the corner of his eye.
“I would’ve thought you’d have figured that out by know, John,” he murmurs in mock disapproval.
John shrugs his shoulders half-heartedly and Sherlock turns back to his computer screen.
It should bother him, he thinks, the fact that Sherlock has dared to bring John to his Mind Palace to share his home but hasn’t thought of revealing the truth of his nature. But is doesn’t bother him, not at all.
He doesn’t care whether or not Sherlock wishes to share his secrets because in all honesty, the truth wouldn’t make a difference.
*
It’s during a round of chess with Sherlock when John comes to a startling epiphany.
I’m not alone, the whisper echoes in his skull.
Sherlock laughs heartily at how John has yet to manage winning a single chess game against him. John can’t help but laugh along.
*
John never returns hiking. He no longer needs to.
*
Time passes.
John quits his job at the clinic and ends up accepting a job offer at Bart’s as a lab professor.
He sees Sherlock daily and nightly.
John finds it’s not enough.
*
John doesn’t notice until he’s nearing fifty that something’s wrong.
He’s old.
“John?” Sherlock looks up from his microscope instinctually.
John touches his face in the mirror above the fireplace. “You never mentioned how old and ugly I’m getting,” he replies nervously.
“Age is but a number John, and the body is simply transport,” Sherlock says in a bored tone, turning back to his bacteria slide.
John frowns at the image staring back at him.
*
John’s almost 74 when he decides to heed Sherlock’s words and retire to a cottage in Sussex.
He has no clue what he’ll do there, but apparently Sherlock does.
*
“You can leave me,” John says from the sofa, voice frailer than yesterday. “I’ll let you.”
He watches Sherlock’s face contort into a mixture of disbelief and fury as he stands above him with a mug of tea.
“Don’t be stupid, John.”
*
“Why are you still here, Sherlock?” John says tiredly from his hospital bed, eyes drooping and hands twitching.
“Who’s he talking to?” Harry Watson asks the nurse as she takes a seat at his bedside.
“Nobody knows, apparently he’s been going on like this since he first checked in.”
“Oh,” she murmurs. “By the way, who brought him here? I haven’t been sent any bill and so I’m not exactly sure who’s been paying his fees.”
The nurse tilts her head as she turns from checking his vitals, “it seems he’s recently had a large amount of money transferred to his account, so no need to worry.”
Harry furrows her brows as she glances down at her older brother.
John won’t look at her. He seems captivated by something in the doorway.
*
“You never answered my question,” John recalls, deathly fever taking its toll on him.
“And what question would that be?” Sherlock sits at his bedside, one hand running his thin, pale fingers through coarse, white hair while the other clutches his weak human hand.
“Why me?” John turns to look him in the eyes.
Sherlock swallows a lump in his throat. “Because you’re John Watson, ex-army medic and avid hitchhiker, a great man.”
John begins laughing but ends up coughing violently.
“I was so alone, and I owe you so much,” he whispers, eyes bright as he lies on the precipice of death.
Sherlock smiles, “You haven’t been alone for a long time, John Watson.”
“I love you,” he replies and he cannot feel his own tears through the drugs they’ve filtered into him.
“I know,” Sherlock smiles again, sadly this time, as the grip on him softens and eventually falls away.