Chapter Text
The world can change in a flash. John's a surgeon; he sees it every day. Whether it's sterile operating theatres or the sand-swept front-lines of Afghanistan, it makes no difference. The balance of survival is caught up in the alignment of circumstance. If you're lucky, you'll make it. The blood will cease and stitches will keep the wound closed and clean. If not...
It's like tossing a coin. Heads: Everything goes on as normal. Tails: Well, you never think that's going to happen to you.
For John, it's not a bullet that throws his existence into disarray – it's a bite.
******
A growl reverberated through the air, and John's breath froze in his throat. It was too late. He would remember that later. By the time he realised the animal was there, he'd already run out of time. There was no chance to shout or reach for his gun. One minute, he was getting supplies for the field surgery, the next, sharp teeth dug into the flesh over his kidney.
Blood welled and dripped as the creature scrabbled at him. Fur shifted over protruding bones, and the rank stench of feral beast assailed John's nose, almost lost within the pain. Christ it hurt. Not just the sharp agony of the wound itself, but a burn underneath his skin – an itching, crawling torment that set his teeth on edge and filled his muscles with lank heat.
With clumsy fingers, he jabbed into the emaciated layer of muscle and gripped the skeletal curve of its straining ribs, wrenching the creature free and pitching it off of him. He must have cried out, a curse or a prayer maybe, because he caught a glimpse of brown eyes and a sanguine-stained muzzle before a gunshot echoed through the tent and the beast was no more.
'Bloody hell, John!' Murray's voice thickened with panic amidst the rush of other personnel. Most went to the animal to ensure it was dead, but some came to his side, applying pressure and talking in hasty voices. A needle darted into his flesh, and his teeth rattled around his stammer of protest.
'Vaccine,' Murray said quickly. 'It works better the sooner we get it in you.'
'Rabies?' John managed, but that was more than a simple shot. His scattered mind couldn't make sense of it, too soaked in adrenaline and fear.
Murray's expression darkened with pity, and he shifted aside to let John get a better look at what had sunk its fangs into him: too big to be just a wolf. 'Lycanthropy.' He dropped his voice. 'It's too thin to be one of our Mactiri. It's probably a rogue that got hungry.'
John shuddered, his stomach rolling as spasms echoed outwards from the shredded skin at his back. He could hear words, surprising ones, like “superficial” and “no long-term damage”, but they barely registered. He was too busy staring at the animal's eyes. He did not know what he expected, but it wasn't that.
It wasn't the humanity he could see in that extinguished gaze.
******
'Comfortable?' The nurse, Nicola, smiled at him, bright and friendly with familiar promise. They'd had some good times together a while back, and there was still an ember there, but it was not one John intended to give new life. The bite was healing, the bruises had all but faded, and his quarantine was almost up.
'I'm bored.' He flicked the pages of his book meaningfully, watching her sympathetic smile.
'A couple of days, and you'll be cleared for duty again,' she promised. 'If you've not shown signs of the transformation by now, then you're not likely to.' She nodded to the other stuff on the table beside him, leaflets and documents: research. 'Been looking into it, have you?'
'I've got nothing better to do.' John shrugged, putting his hands behind his head and leaning back in the spindly chair with a sigh. 'You can't get this far in life and not be aware of the Mactiri. For god's sake, half the people I stitch back up can transform. It works in their favour. They heal a damn sight faster, and they don't tend to get shot as often in the first place, but –'
'But they're born, not made.' Nicola nodded in understanding, perching on the edge of the single bed. 'Everyone's so shocked. If this happened back home, it would be all over the news. Being bitten?' She sounded scandalised, her voice little more than a whisper. 'They think it, he, was mad. The one that got you. Starving and insane. Everyone who knows anything about Mactiri is aware that attacking a human is just – it's – it's unspeakable!'
'It happens,' John pointed out. 'Not just out here, but back in England. Back before the drugs were available –' He cut himself off. 'Well, I'd be facing a new life, wouldn't I? They say those that are bitten are unstable – dangerous. They're even called something different, aren't they?'
'Faolchu,' Nicola supplied, the word clumsy on her tongue. Not entirely alien, but not mundane, either.
'God knows what would have happened to me,' he murmured.
'Well, don't worry.' She reached out, giving his knee a squeeze with a sparkle in her eye. 'Two more days, just to be safe, and you'll be given the all-clear.'
John smiled, his eyes clinging to her departing figure before he tipped back his head. Two more days. He could deal with that.
******
They should have kept him in quarantine.
God, they should have put him down when they had the chance.
John pursed his lips in a thin line of papery skin, trying to ignore the remembered bloom of blood across his tongue. His eyes burned in their sockets and his bones turned molten with fever. His skin itched beneath the glaring white bulwark of the bandage that was wrapped around his torso and shoulder. A bullet in the joint, nerve damage, infection...
Despite the medicine he had been given, the lycanthropy pathogen had taken hold, latching onto his DNA and creating the protein that turned him into this.
Not John any more.
Except he was. That was what made it so much worse. He couldn't remember much of what happened. Screaming. Crying. Friendly fire to put a stop to it because there were right and wrong ways to kill insurgents.
If they were insurgents at all. Everyone he asked somehow couldn't meet his eye while they gave their reassurances. Had they been armed, those people he'd gone for? Had they been men, or was it a village? Women and children?
John's stomach clenched, the pain below his navel radiating outwards as he struggled not to vomit at the thought. Perhaps it would not be so appalling if his memories were entirely blank, but they weren't. They may be hazed by drugs and panic, but it had not been an animal in control. It had been him. He was the presence inside the wolf's head. He had relished the flex of strong muscles and the squat ferocity of his new frame. Other people saw a monster, but guiltily, John remembered feeling like a god.
It terrified him, that revenant of recollection. Everything else he could pretend was a dream, but his own emotions betrayed him. He should be horrified, broken up and torn down by the torture of the transformation. It should have been the end, not a new dawn born in brutality.
The door to his room opened and John turned his aching head, surveying his commanding officer, MacKenzie. Tall, distinguished and, beneath the cologne he wore, reeking of a Mactire. A few weeks ago, John wouldn't have had a clue. Now it was impossible to miss, and he tried not to cringe or cower as he lay in shattered repose.
'Captain Watson.'
'Sir,' John managed, glad he was sensate, rather than lost beneath the ravages of a rotting bullet-wound. Mactiri were supposed to heal quickly. For God's sake, they were harder to hurt in the first place. Except that the drug that should have saved him from all this had worked against him. It weakened his wolf-state, and that meant the bullet his own men fired to bring him down had done more damage than anyone intended. 'I'd salute, but –' He left the sentence hanging, orphaned and bitter, closing his eyes as he received a nod of comprehension.
'We need to discuss your future.'
'What future?' It escaped him on a huff of laughter, insubordinate, but John could not bring himself to care. It was a valid question. He had been a damn good surgeon and a fine soldier. Now his hand shook beneath the burden of the injury in his shoulder, and every tremor signed the death warrant on his chosen career. If he were still able to stitch people up, there might have been a place for him here, even in his new form.
Mactiri had a tendency to gravitate towards organisations with strong hierarchy, where their talents could be put to blissful use. That was for those born to it, though. Their DNA coded from day one to produce the same proteins the virus had gifted to John. He did not fit into that echelon. Not by a long-shot. He wasn't like them. He was Faolchu.
'You'll be granted an honourable discharge, pension and support both physical and psychiatric for what's happened to you,' MacKenzie explained, as stoic as ever. 'You're going home.'
John swallowed, hating those words. Home wasn't back in England's dreary, dismal climes. Home for him was here amidst friends, with a true, solid purpose. One night and that had all been taken from him. He should be grateful. The army was letting him go when they could just as well have locked him up or disposed of him entirely: a threat to his men.
'I killed people,' he whispered. 'Not with a gun or a weapon, but with my teeth. I killed them.'
MacKenzie bowed his head. 'You did,' he said quietly, an acknowledgement of the taste of iron that lingered in John's mouth. 'You will be assessed and monitored. Primary transformations are – they can be challenging. Mactiri learn as they grow. You have not had that blessing. For a human adult to suffer infection and then undergo transformation is rare, more-so since the advent of the vaccine. It is not something to be taken lightly, but with time you'll come to terms with it.' He straightened his shoulders, a hair away from giving him an order. 'You're a strong man, Captain Watson. I am certain you'll adapt.'
'So that's it then?' John asked, ignoring the way his voice caught in his throat but knowing it was heard all the same. For God's sake, MacKenzie could probably smell the grief on him, the same way the thick odour of discomfort radiated from the older man's weathered skin and assaulted John's newly sensitive nose.
'That's it, Captain.'
******
John loved London. It was vital in a way that seemed to pass the rest of the country by. Here, England sloughed its rural façade and the grime of the post-industrial North, settling instead into something both ancient and futuristic. The tang of civilisation blended with the relatively new patina of car fumes, all overlaid on the constant scent of water. It filled the air and soil, just as it carved its way through the landscape in the arcing serpentine of the Thames.
After the desert, the city was akin to life itself.
It was his anchor. The world was cast in shades of grey, but that vivid fragrance was like glassy steel in a realm of muted, matte tones, and John clung to it as tightly as he did his gun. They were like the two faces of a coin: the river and its metropolis beyond the walls of his bedsit – the glisten of possibility. Then there were the barricades of his self-imposed confinement and the gleam of the pistol.
Every night he woke from nightmares, ferrous-tongued and panting, retching on the sharp cocktail of fear and wonder at what he could become. Even now, it was not so much his actions that tormented him, but how he had felt, unrestrained and triumphant. It was as if the rest of his life had been a prelude to finding the hide that fit over his skin, and that thought made him sick down to his soul. That creature was not him. It wasn't. He had transformed once, by accident, and that was the result: the dead and dying, and him unstoppable by anything other than a bullet in his flesh.
Every morning he considered that possibility. Stopping himself. Not suicide, not really. A mercy killing. Euthanasia of a sort. After all, what did he have left? Nothing but his curse to carry around the grim drabness of his uneventful days. Yet he never pulled the trigger. He still craved the life he'd had, the determination he'd possessed, and something within him wouldn't let him give up this fight.
At least not yet.
His therapist told him to write a blog, all the while encouraging him to take steps towards accepting his changed status: no longer standard human, but a bi-morph, just like twelve percent of the population.
'Except not,' John muttered in the pre-dawn gloom, staring at his uneaten apple as he slid the gun back into its place. There were a fair few Mactiri about, even outside the army, but they weren't like him. He might not be the world-expert, but he could tell he was different. He detected it every time he came across a Mactire: a prickling sense of division and uncertainty. They'd glance at him, a grimace curling their lips and their eyes flaring with pity as they took him in: a creature forged in trauma.
Filthy Were.
The slur arose in his mind, sharp and savage. He used it, once, when he was a teenager. The target had been a bully, and he still remembered how white the kid's face had gone; the perverse thrill at seeing that reaction even as squeaks of outrage escaped his peers. Weres were monsters of fantasy, half-man, half-wolf creatures that answered the call of the moon and their own, cruel natures. Mactiri.... weren't.
Oh, there were parallels. No one could deny that. They turned into wolves, after all. Ones with human intelligence and, supposedly, morals, but it had nothing to do with the stages of the moon. They could change when they wanted. There were whispers of unspoken rules and unwritten laws, one of which was that no Mactire or Faolchu should ever bite a human.
Except it happened. He was living proof of that.
John clenched his hand where it rested against his knee, registering the rasp of human skin and blunt fingernails. No fur. No claws. Just a nose that could pick up a dodgy curry three miles away and eyes that had a terrible tendency to track small moving objects. He'd taken an unreasonable and embarrassing dislike to cats, which had only earned his apathy in the past. Next thing he knew he'd be chasing fucking cars.
With a shake of his head, he got to his feet, his meagre breakfast untouched as he clothed his body and leant his weight on his cane, his fingers shivering on the handle when his leg twinged. He couldn't stay here, amidst beige walls bleeding boredom. Instead he headed out into the city – his slender lifeline – limping onwards.
What other choice was there?
******
It was a day like any other, but wasn't that always the way? The wheel of fortune turned anew, and an unremarkable life slipped along a different path.
Regent's Park was a conventional stretch of land, lush and green, the air damp and chill against John's skin. A friendly man sitting on a bench called his name, his cherubic face alive with joy despite the awkwardness of slow recognition and painful realisations. Sympathy gleamed in Mike's eyes when John mentioned getting shot, but it was different. It was sorrow for the thieving bullet, not the bastard of a bite: the other, secret scar under John's shirt.
'Couldn't Harry help?' It wasn't really a question. Even after all these years, Mike knew the answer. John had seen his sister once since he got back. It had been hell. She was his sibling still, but now she reeked of poison and rot. Alcohol was the treble in her symphony of decay and John could barely stomach the stink of her: another Watson on the way out.
'Yeah, like that's going to happen.'
'Could you get a flat-share or something?'
John huffed, his humour blackened at its edges. 'Come on – who'd want me for a flatmate?'
Mike tilted his head, a smile perched on his lips as he shrugged. 'You know, you're the second person to ask me that today.'
John stared. Senses, already sharpened by what happened had to him, focussed on Mike. It was as if something deep in his primitive hind-brain knew that this was a fork in his road.
One that could save his life.
'Who –?' He swallowed, because a touch of a growl lingered in his voice which Mike, gentle and human, wouldn't read as anything but threatening. That wasn't it, not at all. It was excitement. Adrenaline: a sharp surge John didn't understand. 'Who was the first?'
******
He limped through the corridors of Bart's in Mike's shadow, trying to fight the magnetised pull that sang in his veins. Peripherally, he was aware of the changes to this once familiar place: fresh paint and high-tech labs, but the sights and sounds were overwhelmed by the aromas. There was the stress of the medical students, the bouquet of chemicals that imbued the walls and floor and, faintly, something else – known to him and yet strange all at once.
Wolf. John knew it the moment he stepped into the room, and a frisson of alarm shot through him as he glanced in Mike's direction. Had he sensed it on John and thought the pairing would work, or was it just coincidence?
There was no obvious answer in Stamford's honest face, and John kept his distance, abruptly unwilling to step into what was undoubtedly this man's territory. He might not own the place, but it fit around him as perfectly as the immaculate lines of the suit which he wore.
John felt gauche and awkward, but that didn't stop him from staring. His sense of smell may have taken front and centre stage since his transformation, but he still had eyes to appreciate the artful fall of dark chestnut curls in stark contrast to ivory skin. This man did not possess the unhealthy pallor of a confined academic, but a natural, radiant complexion, somewhat drained by the harsh fluorescent light. His large, graceful hands were competent on the equipment he was using, frozen in mid-motion as he surveyed John in turn.
It was stupid to expect amber irises filling the space from one eyelid to the other, or the prick of sharp canines beyond the defined shape of the stranger's mouth, but John looked for them anyway. Not that he needed to. Just because there were no obvious signs of what he was in his features, that did not mean there was no hint of a predator's captivation in the man's gaze: an intensity which made John's skin buzz in anticipation.
Power. Danger. Control. A triumvirate visible in the lines of the man's body and the set of his shoulders: bold and dominant. There was an air of defiant solidarity, a disregard for hierarchy, and John's nostrils flared as he took in the fragrance of the room again. Nothing he sensed was crass or raw, but there was a subtle tenor that he had missed before, one that made his heart thud.
Not just a wolf, but a wolf like him.
Faolchu, not Mactire.
Bitten, not born.
Then he spoke, asking Mike for his phone in a deep, educated voice. John had enough time to register the imperiousness of it before he realised he was offering his own mobile in response. Their fingers did not touch as it left his grasp, each of them staying to either end of the device. However, the distance was not enough to neutralise the aura of promise that arrowed down John's arm and warmed the hollow that had grown beneath his ribs since departing from the desert.
'Afghanistan or Iraq?'
John blinked, his breath arrested somewhere deep in his chest as the man looked at him again, and this time it was neither humanity nor the beast that caught his attention – it was the painful gleam of a razor-sharp mind. 'I'm sorry?' he managed, wheezing the question, but it didn't matter: a response, it seemed, was unnecessary. A young woman – human, John's nose noted absently – entered with some coffee, which the man took with barely any acknowledgement, surveying John over the rim of the cup as he continued to speak.
'I play the violin when I’m thinking. Sometimes I don’t talk for days on end. Would that bother you?' He raised an eyebrow, elegant and aristocratic. 'Potential flatmates should know the worst about each other.'
John went to speak, but couldn't work out what to say first. He was torn between asking how the hell he knew about the war, and the slightly more hysterical assertion that violin and days of silence were certainly not the worst aspects of this man's existence. Did transforming into a wolf not deserve a mention?
What came out in the end was a growling question, one which made Mike shift uncomfortably, but did not faze the man who held John's attention in the slightest. 'Who said anything about flatmates?'
'I did.' He reached behind him, picking up an expensive-looking coat and shrugging it onto his slender shoulders. 'I told Mike this morning I must be a difficult man for whom to find a flatmate, and now he turns up with you: a soldier newly returned from Afghanistan. Hardly a huge leap to the obvious conclusion.'
John shifted his grip on the cane, leaning forward automatically, almost itching to stop this man in his tracks – to prevent him from leaving, which was clearly his imminent intention. 'How did you know about Afghanistan?'
Infuriatingly, he got no straight answers, just a cast-off comment about a central London location and a cool quirk of a smile that John inwardly – and with a hint of nervous laughter – would have described as wolfish. 'So that's it?' he demanded as the man turned to go. 'We've just met and we're going to look at a flat together?'
Silver eyes met his, unapologetic. 'Problem?'
John glanced at Mike, out of his depth and not amused by Stamford's apparent attempts to bite back a smile. 'We don't know anything about each other. You've not even told me the address of the flat, or your name, for that matter.'
The man stilled, that boundless energy somehow contained until John was the only thing in its focus. 'I know you’re an Army doctor and you’ve been invalided home from Afghanistan. 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. You have a therapist who believes your limp is psychosomatic – she's right, I'm afraid.' He cocked his head, narrowed his eyes and just looked, his silence far more telling than his words as John filled in what wasn't being said. Things about fur and fangs and death in the desert. 'That's enough to be going on with, don't you think?'
John found himself on the receiving end of a grin and wink as that resonant voice added, 'The name's Sherlock Holmes, and the address is 221B Baker Street. Afternoon.'
A moment later, he was gone.
Air whistled between John's lips as he emerged from the spellbinding effect of the stranger's – Holmes' – presence. He straightened up, staring at the empty doorway before turning to Mike. 'Did you tell him about me?' he asked, waving a vague hand in confusion when his old friend shook his head.
'Not a word. That's just how he is.' Stamford raised his eyebrows. 'What do you reckon? Think he could solve your problem?'
Mike was talking about staying in London, about four strong walls and a roof over his head for a price he could afford. However, John's mind lingered on other things, from the emptiness that had haunted him since he was shot to the new reality that dogged his footsteps.
'You know what? I think he might.'
******
'You've got questions.' Sherlock settled back in the seat of the taxi.
'You could say that, yeah.' John paused, his thoughts racing through the pantheon of queries that were stacked in his mind. He wasn't sure what to make of any of it. There was Mrs Hudson, the landlady, who looked at them both with a wicked smile and asked whether they'd be needing two bedrooms; the flat in Baker Street, which was in a perfect location but could have been tidier; the unexpected arrival of a Mactire policeman called Lestrade, who had blinked at John in unmasked shock before begging Sherlock to assist with the suicides investigation...
Then there was Sherlock himself, intriguing and strange. His demeanor called to some deep-buried instinct, and try as he might, John couldn’t ignore it.
'You're a private detective of some sort,' he managed, deciding to begin with something mundane, 'but the police don't ask for help from amateurs.'
Sherlock's lips curved in a not-quite smile. 'Consulting detective. I invented the job.'
'And you, what? Solve crimes by looking at people? Your website said you could tell a computer programmer by his tie and an airline pilot by his left thumb.'
'And I can read your service record in a glance and your family life in your mobile phone.' Sherlock shrugged, meeting John's eye in an unspoken challenge.
'Go on then.' John angled his body towards Sherlock as he dragged his phone from his pocket and held it out. 'Tell me.'
Within a minute, he was rapt. At first glance, what Sherlock did was magical – inexplicable – but gradually John realised that, like any illusion, the answer was visible if you chose to look. Sherlock read the story of other people's lives in the minutiae of their appearance: tan lines and the scratches on possessions. There were incorrect assumptions, like Harry being his brother, but somehow the small flaws made it all the more real. Ingenious, but not perfect, much like the man himself.
Sherlock paused, his head cocked attentively. Later, when he knew him better, John would see the gesture for what it was: a moment of uncharacteristic consideration as he debated whether to carry on or tactfully restrain himself. However, John attributed nothing special to the behaviour and simply waited as Sherlock's tone quietened, softer now, as if expecting a blow for his efforts.
'You were bitten in Afghanistan: a rogue. They vaccinated immediately and, judging from the military's response, it appeared successful. So much so that, after mandatory quarantine, you returned to duty, where the medication's slow failure manifested. You were triggered to transform.'
John froze, a deer caught in the headlights of Sherlock's scrutiny, but he did not try and block out the words. Instead he allowed them to flay him open, bloody and broken beneath the cadence of Sherlock's voice.
'It was traumatic, hence the therapist, though you may have been given one anyway, considering the drastic change of lifestyle. Clouded by the conflict of the preventative drug and the bi-morph proteins still present in your body, you were more animal than most would expect, and you had to be neutralised: friendly fire. Accelerated healing was compromised, so you suffered a slower, less complete recuperation culminating in your honourable discharge. You've not transformed since.'
John bit his tongue, his mood oscillating between alarm that he was so easy to read, and acknowledgement that his fear was probably unfounded. He doubted that anyone in the world other than Sherlock could have looked at him and seen all that, his accuracy as chilling as it was breath-taking.
'How –?' He looked down at his hands, his clothes, his shoes, trying to take in what Sherlock had observed that gave away such precise information. 'How did you know?'
'If you'd been bitten anywhere but a war-zone, the reporters would have a field day. It's too taboo to escape the media's eye. Rogues are more common in areas torn by conflict. You're RAMC; front-line duty is limited therefore you're likely to have been attacked on base, with witnesses and access to the vaccine. Anything but immediate administration would be medical malpractice. Quarantine is standard.'
'What about the rest of it?' John asked. 'The transformation and all that.'
'It's in your scent.' Sherlock admitted that fact as if relying on such input was a personal failing, but John hardly noticed, too intent on the other man's words. It was the first time he had vocalised anything to do with the information that John could detect so readily in the blend of hormones and fragrances that emanated from Sherlock's skin.
'That obvious is it?'
'Only to other bi-morphs. Humans don't have the nose for it. It's your fragrance: the dichotomy of infection and the fading signature of inoculation chemicals provide a firm foundation for the rest of my conclusions.' He blinked, releasing a sigh before he continued. 'You and your colleagues were unprepared for your primary change and rash action was required. A brother-in-arms would not have shot to kill, but would have known incapacitation was essential, so the wound was neither to your core body, nor was it peripheral.'
Sherlock turned to look out of the window, his shoulders rounded as if he was bracing himself for an unfavourable response. 'You were dangerous, and those around you did not have the necessary knowledge to assist you without causing you harm.'
John took a deep breath, trying to identify the mire of emotion that churned in his gut. Some of it was anger and shame; he had been acquainted with Sherlock for barely a day and already he seemed to know everything, though he had not mentioned the killings. John was not sure whether that was deliberate or simply one aspect that he could not deduce.
However, there was also a different feeling, something that made tentative warmth pulse along his veins. Since he had changed, John found himself the victim of pitying looks and awkward silences. No one, beyond the probing questions of his therapist, had spoken about what he was or how it happened. No one acted like they understood.
Except Sherlock, who was frankly –
'Amazing.' The word slipped from John's lips unbidden, but once it was free he wouldn't call it back for the world. Perhaps he should fear that Sherlock would judge him, but instead he felt lighter than he had in weeks. Hopeful and alive, as if someone had peeled a mask from his face. 'That was – amazing.'
Sherlock's twitch of surprise was telegraphed along the seat they shared. It was also written in his scent, a kaleidoscope of nuances John did not yet know how to read, but earnestly hoped he'd one day understand.
'That's not what people normally say,' he murmured, casting John a suspicious glance.
'What do they normally say?'
'“Piss off”.'
The laughter startled him, an iridescent bubble that popped in his stomach, joined by Sherlock's deeper, subdued chuckle as the cab wound its way towards Brixton and the waiting crime-scene. His mirth, absent for so long, was almost shocking, and something shifted under his ribs, loosening an iron-clad fist of misery.
His smile refused to fade, and as the taxi pulled up to the police cordon, John lifted his chin. Sherlock had deduced everything about him, from the mundane to the morose. Maybe he couldn't read Sherlock's life story in the cut of his suit, but there was plenty to learn. Perhaps now he would have the chance to discover more about this enigmatic man.
******
The fragrance of Angelo's assailed John's nose, fuelling the fire of his hunger as he tried not to raven his lasagne. The plate brimmed with succulent ground meat, and the herbs and other accoutrements were subtle rather than overwhelming.
Since the change, so many foods seemed unappealing at best. Now, every flavour was piquant across his tongue, and his stomach ached with appreciation. The sensation distracted him from the faint unease that lingered over the proprietor’s – Angelo, human through-and-through – belief that he was Sherlock's date.
Not that the assumption was unfavourable. Sherlock was a physically attractive man: long, lean lines and an exotic edge to his features that set him apart from the general populace. However, people seemed to believe that, for whatever reason, of everyone he could have, Sherlock would choose John. Even as a Faolchu, he was pretty much the embodiment of ordinary. If it weren't for the fact he needed a flatmate, John doubted Sherlock would look at him twice.
Yet there was something about the way everyone behaved when they saw him with Sherlock, a kind of stunned curiosity, as if they were unused to seeing anyone in his company. The humans – Angelo, Mrs Hudson, the ominous man in the car park – decided they were lovers. The Mactiri...
'You confused them.' Sherlock's voice interrupted his thoughts, making him look up from his half-finished meal. He was staring out of the window, poised and predatory as he waited for the murderer John had texted to make an appearance. 'Lestrade and his men.'
'Yeah.' John nodded, pulling a face. 'I got that.' There had been the initial flare of shock as the various Mactiri on the squad – and there were several – realised what he was. However, that was quickly subsumed by their disbelief that he appeared to be with Sherlock.
One, a pretty sergeant with a not-so-dazzling personality had gaped at him, a frown cinching her brow. She had reluctantly held up the cordon, pursing her lips before warning him off.
'He gets off on it you know, and one day it won't be enough. We'll be standing around a body, and it will be Sherlock Holmes who put it there.'
However, considering Sherlock's merciless insinuations about the Mactire sergeant and the human Forensics lead, maybe the attempt at character assassination wasn't so unexpected. 'They didn't seem concerned by you, though, what you are, I mean. Just that someone was with you.'
'I tend to work alone,' he replied absently, one elbow balanced on the table where a full plate would be. John had only seen Sherlock consume the cup of coffee in the lab, and he'd spent a fair bit of time in his company since. Didn't the man ever get hungry?
'No girlfriend?' John asked, scooping another piece of lasagne into his mouth and sensing, like the flash of cool moonlight across his skin, the moment when Sherlock's gaze shifted to take him in.
'Not really my area,' came the smooth reply, and a spark prickled along John's spine.
'Oh, boyfriend then? Which is fine, by the way.'
'I know it's fine,' Sherlock said, and there was a hint in his expression of something torn between amusement and curiosity. What was conspicuously absent was anything like defensiveness. It was as if he honestly did not care what anyone might think of him. 'I don't have a boyfriend.'
'Oh, right, so you're single, like me.' The words escaped John before he had a chance to censor them, and he detected the exact moment when the atmosphere changed, closing off. Though the step back Sherlock took was metaphorical, John sensed the distance all the same and silently cursed himself.
'John, while I'm flattered by your interest...'
'No, I –' He set his fork down, holding up a finger. 'I wasn't – I didn't – I wasn't asking like that.' He brutally ignored the quiet flare of mortified disappointment deep in his gut. Christ – he had only known Sherlock for a day and he didn't need to get entangled with his potential flatmate of all people. It would be a disaster in the making. 'I just meant that it's fine. It's all fine.'
Quickly, he looked away, unable to bring himself to meet Sherlock's gaze again. He concentrated on his dinner, his eyes affixed to his plate even as his other senses remained attuned to the man across from him. That was how he noticed when lethargic surveillance turned into pointed interest.
'That's him.' Sherlock jerked his head towards a black cab idling at the kerb. 'A taxi. Clever. Why's that clever?' He frowned as if querying his mental process, only to blink as John strained around to take a better look. 'Don't stare.'
'You're staring.'
'We can't both stare.'
John grinned as the lingering tension dispersed, twisting into something full of delicious anticipation as Sherlock's back straightened and his chin lifted, his pale gaze intent on the ebony vehicle. In the blink of an eye, he was moving, grabbing his scarf and coat as he rose to his feet, every movement efficient. John followed suit, clumsy in his haste not to be left behind as Sherlock hurried out of the door.
Acrid car exhaust coated the air, which was filled with the rumbling, timorous hum of engines. John squinted, craning his neck to observe the passenger. The man was examining the buildings around him, agitated and suspicious. However, before either John or Sherlock so much as moved, the rear lights flared and the taxi pulled away, merging into the homogeneous flow of traffic.
Sherlock darted forward, skimming over the bonnet of a car as John was left to follow, his apologies half-drowned by the angry blare of car horns. He attempted to memorise the cab number as it sailed away, the digits blazing through his mind even as he trotted to a halt at Sherlock's side.
The taller man's fingers flew to his temples and his eyes squeezed shut. At first, Sherlock's grimace appeared to be one of despair, but John didn't need to look twice to realise it was concentration. Street names and directions tumbled from Sherlock's lips in a babbled incantation, and before John could gasp a query, he was off, his long legs sprinting and his coat a whirl in his wake.
There was nothing conscious in John's decision to follow. He simply did, obeying a primal imperative he didn't dare question. The song of heat in the bunch and flex of his muscles was a relief, as if he shed weight with every step. His boots created a stampede of rhythm, and every breath that swelled his lungs was deep and purposeful as he found his stride.
It should have been a fog of colour and motion, but John was acutely aware of his surroundings: the coolness of the night air and the sound of cars. Shouts and squealing tyres bombarded him before the symphony of shoes on metal interrupted the din. Ahead of him, Sherlock lunged up a fire-escape and onto the rooftops, his feet a blur as he led the way.
London's perfume was miasmic: chemicals mixed with the plethora of foods being cooked in bars and restaurants, underscored by the odour of ever-present decline. John's vision became blinkered, narrowing his field of view to the man in front of him as they darted and jumped, cutting a new path through the tangle of the metropolis. It was dangerous, and insane, and amidst all his concentration on the physical, John realised he had never felt more alive, not even back in a war-zone.
Ahead, Sherlock half-climbed, half-leapt back down to ground level. John hardly noticed the chill of the ladder beneath his hands as he followed, his knees bending to take the impact before he was off again, lunging out into the road as the taxi skidded to a halt. Sherlock almost tore the door open, an ID gleaming in his hand as he scowled at the occupant in disbelief.
'No, no! This is all wrong. The tan, the teeth. Californian, am I right?' He gestured to the suitcase at the man's feet. 'Just arrived.'
The hapless passenger gave a dumb nod, and John sucked in a breath, almost choking on it as Sherlock said, 'Everything all right is it? Good. Welcome to London.' He slammed the door shut, scowling as if he was entertaining the notion that they'd followed the wrong taxi.
'Not our man?' John asked.
'Tourist. No one who lived here would let a cab take them the long way around.'
'So not a murderer then?' John crooked a grin, glancing over his shoulder and uttering a curse as he saw the car stopped a short distance away, the passenger pointing them out to a couple of police officers on the beat. 'Uh, Sherlock?'
Sherlock followed his gaze before looking back at John. His eyes shone as the thrill of the chase glowed in his face. 'Got your breath back?'
John gave a bright laugh. 'Ready when you are.'
Their feet barely touched the ground as they raced through London's knotted alleyways, crossing wide streets like ghosts and stirring up abandoned newspapers as they passed. Perspiration dampened John's back and beaded his brow. His lips were dry, and his heart drummed out a hallelujah in the base of his throat. His mind was fixed on nothing but the absolute rightness of speeding through the city, and by the time he and Sherlock fell through the front door of Baker Street, they were gasping and laughing, high on the adrenaline.
John's body was one gigantic pulse, throbbing and dancing to exhilaration’s beat. His nerves shimmered and jumped, and the musk of him and Sherlock, slick with sweat and joy, mingled into a volatile cocktail that he could practically taste, smoky and delicious at the back of his throat.
'That –' he managed. 'That was ridiculous. The most ridiculous thing I've ever done.'
'And you invaded Afghanistan.' Sherlock chuckled, his head rolling on the wall to look at John. Their eyes met, and John's stomach swooped in a shameless flip of delight. It made him think back to the restaurant, to his protests that he wasn't coming on to Sherlock: it seemed that was a lie. Maybe he hadn't done it deliberately, but that didn't change this: the hum in his veins where pursuing and pursued changed into a different kind of game all together.
One that Sherlock had declined.
Swallowing tightly, John tore his eyes away, shaking his head as he pinned a smile back on his face. It was just the run, that was all, emotions running high and all that. It was easy to confuse elation with lust. 'Why aren't we back at Angelo's?' he asked. 'Keeping an eye out?'
'They'll inform me if anything comes up. It was a long-shot anyway.'
'So what are we doing here?'
'Passing the time.' Sherlock's gaze swept down to John's boots and back up again before he cocked his head and lifted one eyebrow. 'Proving a point.' A knock echoed through the hallway, and John frowned. 'You might as well answer it; it's for you.'
Warily, he moved, glancing back at Sherlock's watchful form before doing as he was told. Pulling aside the dark door to 221, he blinked at Angelo. The boisterous man was standing at the threshold, a grin on his lips. 'Sherlock texted me,' he admitted. 'Said you might be needing this.'
John stared at the cane in the man's grasp, undoubtedly his, the crutch that had helped him limp through the days and weeks after returning from the war. He'd never been without it, let alone had it slip his mind so readily. Now it lay in Angelo's palms, and John's thigh trembled with an echo of pain. Yet his limb didn't give out, and he refused to surrender to it as he straightened his back and shook his head in disbelief.
With rough thanks, he took it from Angelo's grasp, watching the man throw a wink at Sherlock and amble away. Wordlessly, John looked over his shoulder, taking in Sherlock's smile. There were hints of satisfaction at its edge – delight at being proven right – but John still answered it with one of his own, trying to get his head around this man and everything he could do.
'Mrs Hudson?' Sherlock called, his voice loud in the evening's calm. 'Doctor Watson will take the room upstairs.' He lifted an eyebrow as if daring John to protest, but how could he deny it? He couldn't turn his back on this, on Baker Street and the man who dwelt within its walls.
Not when, for the first time since setting foot on England's soil, John felt like he'd come home.