Chapter Text
Sherlock stumbled happily among the crowds of people blending into the various shades of clothing, looking like any other junkie wandering around aimlessly. A limping army doctor on his way to his therapist's office might never have noticed a character like Sherlock before today. No. He probably would have just passed Sherlock right on by without giving a single thought, other than maybe a distaste for the stench coming off of him, or maybe even a tiny premonition about his death. There was nothing with in all that is reasonable in the universe that could bring these two together. Not a single thing. Nope. Nothing ever happens to John. Nothing except being discharged from the army and forced to see a psychiatrist for post traumatic stress disorder. Nope. Nothing at all.
Until it did.
Upon a sudden whim in his dizzying high a brilliant social experiment came to Sherlock. Sherlock should kiss a stranger and deduce their reactions! Yes! That would be positively brilliant! He could collect data on the general public's average sexual orientation and fear of strangers. He could see how many would react violently and how many would simply walk away! Brilliant plan! Certainly no holes in a simple social experiment. Sherlock would get his data, go home, and write it down before this glorious haze faded away from him, lost to the cold grip of sobriety. He scanned the public trying to figure out his first mark. It was silly really seeing as the experiment was supposed to be conducted randomly, but Sherlock was still rather nervous about the idea of someone reacting violently so he thought it was best to choose his first subject wisely.
His eyes fell on a staggering man in jeans and a blue knit jumper. His posture, hair cut, and recent tan suggested that he was probably ex-military, just back from deployment. It was likely he was discharged due to injury. Clearly on his way to the therapy office just two blocks away. Considering the stranger's feeble state Sherlock decided that he would probably be a good first try. Sherlock set his posture up straight and adjusted the collar of his coat. He took a second to fix his hair thinking that the results might be effected by how attractive he was at the time. Checking his breath and then taking the time to pop a piece of peppermint gum into his mouth he began walking in the doctor's direction.
John's first impression of the junkie was that he was walking directly toward him without showing any sign of shifting in order to avoid bumping into him. It surprised him. He wasn't really sure what to do with an outright confrontation like this. He kept walking until he and Sherlock came to a direct stop in front of one another. Before John could manage to move to get out of the younger man's way he felt Sherlock put his hands on his shoulders. With a friendly smile on his face, Sherlock proceeded to close his eyes and press a long but clean kiss to the doctor's lips. Almost as though it were obligatory, John closed his eyes too, despite all that his mind was shouting at him.
Suddenly John was catapulted forward. It had always felt like that. Sudden bouts of clairvoyance always felt like he was being hurled forward at the speed of light and coming to an abrupt and sickening stop. Everything else around him would still move though, images as though he was at the cinema. Suddenly he could see everything about this man that had him by the shoulders and the lips. He could see an entire lifetime.
Sherlock would get clean and they would move in together by a chance encounter with a mutual friend. Sherlock would be a renowned consulting detective and would take him through a whirl-wind of impossibly fascinating homicide cases. He would fix his limp and ease his ptsd-induced nightmares for him. Sherlock would suddenly fall off the wagon again and John would help him get clean all over again because he was his best friend and he owed him that much. Sherlock would meet a woman and care for her deeply and it would break John's heart but the woman would die and things would return to normal. John would feel alive again.
John would meet so many new friends because of this man. John would feel useful for once. John would fall in love and then suddenly in an act of love and fear Sherlock would hurl himself off a building and be dead, and John would be alone. There would be three years of staggering silence, boredom, depression, and nightmares. So many nightmares all restored by a single jump. Then Sherlock would be there again. He would suddenly waltz right back into John's life announcing that his death was a ruse to protect him from some invisible foe that was threatening his life and the life of everyone he had loved. Suddenly John would be whole again. He would follow Sherlock until the end of his days never letting him out of his sight again. They would be happy in the end, dying in the same death bed at a very old age.
The lips pulled away and John was hurdled back through time and space into the present situation. Sherlock was staring into John's eyes now with those piercing bright blue eyes slightly darkened by his blown out pupils. John simply stared right back calculating the information he'd received from the established contact. This was John's soulmate staring him in the face. This was who John was meant to spend the rest of his life with. The one that would pick him up and make him whole and worthy of a fulfilling life again. If that wasn't worth something, then what was? This stranger, this junkie would find him, save him, leave him, and then save him all over again. God. Fate is a twisted bitch introducing them like this. John with his heart swollen over the idea of being so fulfilled by this man had half a mind to kiss him again. His hand had already unconsciously cupped the future detective's face. But then something stopped him.
He thought about those three silent years between the happiness he would find and his actual happily ever after. He thought of what kind of person would fake their death right in front of the person that loved them so much, and not bother to tell them about it for three entire years.
So John Hamish Watson decided to walk away from his soulmate. He pushed Sherlock from him and just walked away as fast as his limping body would carry him.