Work Text:
The story goes like this…
When Eve took the apple from the snake that fateful day and doomed the human race to knowledge, curiosity and free will, something momentous and irreversible happened. God’s wrath was such that he cursed Adam and Eve with the ability to feel shame; shame in their differences, shame in their nakedness, shame in their need for truth. It was a cruel thing to do, to take a perfect harmony and rend it asunder, but what once was done could not be undone and so the die was cast.
But then a miracle happened. A miracle not handed down by God or twisted by the Devil. It was a miracle born shiny and new and stemming directly from the curse of free will, from Eve’s transgression.
As they were about to step over the threshold of Eden into the harsh and unforgiving world, Adam and Eve paused to take one last breath of sweet air, turned to gaze into each other’s eyes, and then Adam reached out with his right hand as Eve extended her left and they took that first step into the unknown linked together in body, mind, and spirit. God was so moved by their courage and devotion to each other that he made the link permanent and marked them for each other for as long as they both would live on Earth and ascend into the next life. In other words, they would complete each other until the end of time and carry both Sin and Grace and bear the burden of each together.
And that is how soulmates were created.
Or at least, that’s the way the story goes…
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Of course, that’s just how the story goes in the Christian faith.
In China, one’s ancestors search the world for a perfect match for their descendents and mark both parties accordingly. The blessings of the ancestors are never wrong and therefore they are to be revered above all else. If the souls do not find each other through folly or distance it is not the fault of the ancestors but the failure of the individual and brings great shame upon the family.
In the Hindu religion, Shiva rends the world apart only to remake it again and again, fitting the pieces back together with painstaking care. He marks matching pieces so he will never lose track of his duty and life after life, souls will have a way of finding each other until it is time for him to dance once more.
In Native American cultures, the spirit animal gives a mark to show the beginning of the journey into adulthood, a journey that will be deemed complete when the matching mark is found. There are those who journey a very long time indeed and those who, tragically, never finish their journeys, a sign of great disfavor from the trickster Raven.
Around the world and through all recorded history, in every civilization, there is a myth of the soulbond. They vary wildly, no two alike, and no two able to encompass the true feeling of completeness and peace of finding that other half of yourself. But they’re all there and they’re all fascinating in their own right. There are people who collect these myths like a dragon hoards gold and pore over them in the same sort of manner. For some it’s a hobby, for others a lifelong obsession.
For Sherlock Holmes it is a necessity.
Soulbonds are the source of so many crimes, so many excuses for the horrible things people are capable of doing to each other. It behooves him to know the stories in order to know the thought processes. After all, nothing is new or unique. Everything has been thought of before. This is how an uneducated butcher from Leeds can kill his wife in a psychotic break that eerily mirrors the myth of Hercules killing his wife and children. Everything old is new.
///////////////
If someone were to ask him such a mundane question, Sherlock would say his favorite color is blue. It’s the truth and not. It’s complicated.
When puberty hit him at the tender age of eleven, proving him a perfectly normal human boy in this one thing at least, he spent hours in front of the mirror fascinated by the intricate design over his right pectoral muscle. It wove and curled like frost done as a sand painting and seemed to shift hues for no apparent reason, moving from deepest midnight to the most delicate aquamarine in the blink of an eye. And in the middle, the most important and entrancing part was the shifting letters of the name John. Once, Sherlock saw it at just the right angle as sunset turned to twilight and he swore it flashed silver for a split second. He never saw it do that again, but he never forgot it either.
The knowledge that somewhere out there, maybe on the other side of the world, maybe down the street, there was another human being with the exact same soulmark on the left side of their chest with his own name in curling letters gave a lonely and freakish boy the first sense of connection and belonging that he had ever felt. However, as the years passed and there was no sign of a suitable mate, no one interesting enough to be worthy of his frostfire soulmark, Sherlock fell into depression, then dissolution as he discovered illegal drugs to mask the pain of that fading sense of peace. It wasn’t until Lestrade (right handed, soulmark forest green and blocky like a labyrinth, name of Miko) found him and gave him a new purpose, a better purpose, that Sherlock was able to claw his way back to semi-humanity. The mark was just a mark, the Work became the new dragon’s hoard and Sherlock stopped looking at his skin and started looking at his clothes, becoming a favored regular in Savile Row.
Still, if someone were to overcome the daunting apprehension Sherlock so easily inspired and ask him such a mundane question, he would still tell them his favorite color is blue. It’s still the truth and still not.
But nobody ever asks and so nobody ever knows.
//////////////
By the time a broken down soldier walks into a lab at St Bart’s hospital looking for a flatshare, Sherlock has been thirty three years old for six months and has met forty seven Johns in his life so far. Of the forty seven, only eleven were left handed. Of those eleven, only one was marginally interesting for a grand total of two weeks. It was no coincidence that those two weeks followed Sherlock’s discovery that his new friend Victor preferred to go by his middle name instead of his first. It was something he should have remembered. It was something he deleted in a fit of pique spawned from disappointment. It was the greatest mistake of his life.
When Mike Stanford introduced his old med school mate as John Watson, Sherlock couldn’t help the little flare of hope that sparked in his chest only to be ruthlessly crushed. This was, after all, the forty eighth time he had done this particular dance. He spent the next five minutes in a whirlwind of deductions and melodrama anyway, just out of habit, just in case there really was a need to impress. He was so caught up in his showmanship that it was a bit of a shock to be reminded by this new John that he hadn’t yet introduced himself.
“The name’s Sherlock Holmes and the address is two-two-one bee Baker Street.”
John the Forty Eighth showed no sign of recognition of his name and the tiny little spark in Sherlock’s chest was extinguished. As he strode down the hall toward the mortuary, he idly wondered if John Watson would turn up or not. Then he mentally shrugged. Whether he did or he didn’t was no matter, he was obviously yet another wrong John as the name Sherlock garnered no reaction. After all, it had been almost fifteen years since Sherlock Holmes had spared a thought for Jonathan Victor Trevor.
It was a gross oversight indeed for the world’s most observant man.
/////////////
John Watson was a late bloomer. He didn’t receive his mark until his fourteenth birthday had come and gone for several months. He had lived in fear for years that he would be one of those so called ‘new souls’ that didn’t have a pair yet and so never bore a lovelace, as John’s Scottish Mum called it, at all. John’s lovelace, when it did appear on the left side of his chest, was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. A swirling, delicate, shifting blue design of such complexity it defied description. And there, right in the middle of it, danced the letters that spelled out the name of his other half.
William
It was mildly surprising that the name was so obviously male as John had so far only been attracted to two girls; Lisa Rhodes, right handed and Genevieve Smith, a lefty, respectively, and never given a thought to any of the other boys in his class. Still, he was only fourteen, and a lovelace wasn’t a marriage proposal yet. The only William John knew at that time was his Uncle William; his Dad’s brother, so he excitedly admired his new adornment and figured he had plenty of time to meet the right William.
By the time he was thirty seven and walked into a lab at St. Bart’s a broken down soldier, he had met only eight Williams in his life. Two went by Will, one went by William, and the other five all preferred Bill. All of them were right handed. All of them were the wrong William.
The most promising of the bunch for John had been Bill Murray, his squad mate in Afghanistan. But Army barracks are not known for their privacy and it only took three hours to see Murray with his shirt off for the first time. Murray’s lovelace was a primrose yellow that spiraled and swirled like a hurricane and the letters in the middle spelled out Genevieve. John felt a pang of regret, wheedled Bill into taking leave with him home to London six months later, and had his Mum throw a neighborhood garden party that Genevieve Smith was sure to attend. Eighteen months later, at the age of twenty-eight, John Watson stood next to his crushed hope and his second crush as they became Lieutenant and Mrs. William Murray.
For the next ten years, John was a little too busy getting shot at and shooting other people to meet any new Williams. He spent less and less time looking at his beautiful lovelace, less and less time wondering about William and where he could be or what he could be doing. It became something that was just there to be pushed aside like so many other luxuries in the sweat, blood, death, and boredom that made up life in a warzone.
And then John stopped being shot at and actually got shot.
The sniper had been behind him, and the bullet hit him in the back and ripped out the front of his chest, nicking his aorta, but miraculously missing the killshot to the heart. John lay in the sand bleeding over the corpse of the boy he’d been trying to save (Sergeant James “Jimmy” Teagues, grey lovelace with the name Peter in it), and prayed to his amorphous God to please let him live. God must have heard him, because he woke up in Germany five days later with his head swimming with the good drugs and his entire upper left quadrant swathed in thick white bandages. Nine days later, when he’d been weaned off the good stuff and was making do with the less addictive painkillers, he carefully maneuvered himself from his bed and into his tiny bathroom, dragging his IV stand behind him. There, in the flickering, unforgiving light of a single fluorescent bulb, he peeled away the now much smaller bandage and got a good look at his wound for the first time.
His lovelace; his gorgeous, wonderful soulmark made up of a thousand and one beautiful hues of blue, the only proof of his tie to his William, was gone. In its place was a twisted, red, horrible crater of a scar that he could only hope would someday heal into a benign white spider’s web of tissue. The phantom pain in his leg hurt far less than the phantom pain in his heart.
There, in that tiny bathroom, standing on shaky legs, one of which was stupidly refusing to work correctly, John wept.
He was broken.
/////////////
We all know the story by now; the story of the soldier and the sociopath and how they saved each other; the story of Sherlock and John.
There was a Lady in Pink, a Blind Banker, and a Great Game. There was A Scandal, a Hound, and a Fall. There was inappropriate laughter at crime scenes, a thousand takeaway meals, and truly alarming quantities of tea. There was a friendship that turned into the stuff of legends only to be snuffed out through necessity, loyalty and betrayal.
There was two years of suffering.
Then there was a Return.
/////////////
When Mary Morstan married John Watson it was actually her second wedding. Mary’s mark was a brilliant crimson with the name Terrence in the center. It didn’t shift at all.
Terry Davies had moved into the house next to the one Mary grew up in when they were both five. Mary was right handed and Terry was left handed. They thought nothing of it until Mary turned twelve two months after Terry did and the matching red sunbursts appeared on Terry’s left pectoral and the upper curve of Mary’s right breast. Terry’s bondmark did not say Mary, but then it wouldn’t, would it? They were married on Mary’s eighteenth birthday and had two brilliant years together. They attended the same college, Terry for early childhood education and Mary for computer science. They both worked two jobs to pay for their schooling and their tiny, cheerful studio flat. Then Terry’s friend Frank found his soulmate and Terry went to the stag party while Mary joined the separate hen night. Mary got home safely. Terry didn’t. His taxi was plowed into by a garbage truck whose driver had already had two citations for driving under the influence. Terry died on the way to the hospital. When the CIA came calling about Mary’s legendary hacker abilities and inquiring about the tae kwon do black belt she’d held for five years, she shook their hands and never looked back.
Twenty years and several lifetimes later, she sat happy and fulfilled as her new husband’s best friend gave the most poignant, touching speech she had ever heard. She thought nothing of it.
She should have.
/////////////
William Sherlock Scott Holmes.
Sorry?
That’s the whole of it. If you’re looking for baby names.
/////////////
After the revelation, the heart wrenching goodbye, the return of the East Wind, and the interminable drive home away from the only man he’d ever loved with the woman he no longer trusted; John locked himself in the loo, took off his shirt, looked at his white spiderweb scar, and gave in to the tears.
Mary sat outside the door to the bathroom and listened to her husband’s heart wrenching sobs. He had told her the story of his bondmark a month into their relationship; how he had never found the right William, how the bullet had destroyed his only chance of ever proving it if he did, of how he had loved his best friend to distraction and never done anything because he couldn’t possibly be the man’s soulmate without the name Sherlock on his chest. She sat, and she thought. She thought of Terry, missed chances, and taking opportunity where you could find it. She thought of pulling yourself up from a well of overwhelming grief and starting over from scratch. But mostly, she thought of the file Jim Moriarty had handed her once upon a time about William Sherlock Scott Holmes and she ruminated on the color blue. Then she heaved her pregnant body up off the floor and went to her cache and picked up her go bag. She left her keys on the dining room table and carefully and quietly closed the door behind her and stole away to find somewhere to start a new life with her soon to be born daughter. As she vanished for the third time of her life into the night, she never looked back.
Across town, Sherlock sat in his black chair in his empty sitting room. He thought about going into the empty loo with its half empty medicine cabinet and cleaning up in the shower that had one full shelf and one empty shelf. He considered just dragging himself into his empty room and tumbling into sleep in his empty bed where the dreams and nightmares waited for him. Then he got up, went to the heating grate behind which were hidden his supplies, went back to his chair, pushed the plunger of the syringe until it too was empty and his veins were so very full, and flew.
/////////////
Six Months Later….
John tried so hard not to think of things. He tried not to think of where Mary had gone. He tried not to think of what his four month old daughter might look like, or even what her name was. He tried not to think of the way he ended most nights with a glass of scotch, only the one, but still a crutch. He tried not to think about finding Moriarty and why the hell the people he came in contact with had such a propensity to fake their deaths.
But most of all, he tried not to think about his William, his Sherlock. He tried so desperately not to think about the fact that Sherlock never once even hinted that his lovelace name might be John. He tried not to think of the stories of lost souls; the poor bastards who never found their match, or found their match and turned out to not be the other person’s name. He tried not to think about how he could ask the most scientific man he knew, the man who never believed what he couldn’t see, couldn’t prove with his own five senses, to believe that the crater in John’s shoulder had once held the most beautiful blue and complex filigree on Earth that had spelled out the true first name of the world’s only consulting detective. He tried not to think about how fruitless it all was.
And so he packed up his things, sold his house, moved back to Baker Street, drank his three fingers of Scotch a night, and tried desperately not to watch his best friend with avarice in his eyes.
It mostly worked. Most days, he was so elated to be back in the thick of the insanity that was SherlockandJohn that he didn’t care about his failure of a marriage, his grief, or the probability of never meeting the only child he would ever have. The other days, the bad days, the days he went to work and had no patients and too much paperwork to catch up on, those were the days he dragged himself home in a miasma of hopelessness. Those were the days Sherlock looked at him and silently, so silently left him alone. Those were the days three fingers of scotch turned to four and he drank alone in the same room as his other half, the gulf between them so very wide.
/////////////
Sherlock knew he’d found his John. John the forty-eighth had always been the right John, the only John really. A pity Sherlock was evidently a lost soul. He remembered the tentative, awkward come on that night in Angelo’s and he hated himself and his utter lack of foresight. He hated the distance, the gaping hole around his heart, but most of all he hated the silent nights. He hated when he heard the tired, dragging tread of John’s feet upon the stairs and when his friend moved into the room looking so haggard and beaten down. He hated that he couldn’t reach out and touch, couldn’t fold the most important person in his life, the most important person there would ever be in his life, in his arms and cherish him until the grey pallor of exhaustion and grief melted away and the brightness of John’s sunshine smile appeared instead.
He hated Mary. Oh, how he loathed Mary. She had done this. She had taken his golden, beautiful John and turned him to an ashen ghost. Ever since the night on the tarmac, the night she left and took John’s unborn child with her, John had had these spells. John was suffering, and so Sherlock suffered. John was in pain, and so Sherlock hurt endlessly. John was beyond his reach, and so Sherlock drowned in loneliness. Sherlock would willingly go to Serbia and into his own death and do it happily if only Mary would return with John’s daughter and end the agony of watching John pine and waste away.
Tonight was a bad night, a silent night as Sherlock thought of them in his head. It was John and Mary’s first wedding anniversary, or it would have been had she not run away. It was an extra scotch night, a sleepy eyed and sorrowful John night, a night for John to look small and fragile in his red chair with the amber liquid clutched in his hand and glistening malevolently in the lamplight. And it was about to start…right…now.
Sherlock heard that hated and hateful heavy tread on the stairs, but wait, something wasn’t right. The steps were slower, almost shuffling, as if John couldn’t quite get his legs to work properly, as if he were hurt. Sherlock sprang from his place at the kitchen table in alarm and crossed to the outer door in three long strides. He flung it wide just as John went to push it open and Sherlock suddenly found himself with an armful of warm and quite drunken army doctor. John put a hand on Sherlock’s chest and levered himself back into a standing position even as he listed to the right just a bit. Sherlock found himself disconcerted even as his heart tripped erratically at the feel of John’s hands on him, however fleetingly. John was beyond inebriated, he was completely pissed. Sherlock hadn’t seen him like this since the ill fated stag night.
“Sheeerrrrrlock. William Sheerrrlock Scott Holmes. William, William, William, Sheeeerrrrlock.”
John giggled inanely and a tad hysterically as he pushed past a bewildered Sherlock and stumbled into the kitchen to take down his three fourths full bottle of scotch and a clean mug from the drying rack next to the sink. Then he swayed over to his chair in front of the fireplace and dropped unceremoniously into it. He placed the mug carefully on the side table and proceeded to splash a double measure of Dewar’s into it.
“William Sheerrrlock Scott Holmes.”
John kept murmuring Sherlock’s full name over and over again, slurring the Sherlock until it was an endless susurrus of sound. Sherlock’s perplexity turned swiftly to worry. Was this it? Was this how John left for the final time? Was he blaming Sherlock for the absence of his wife and the loss of his child?
“William, William, William…I looked you know. Met William after William, but none of them were the right one, none of them were mine. Then I met Sherlock, and do you know he’s brilliant? Absolutely amazing he is.”
Sherlock was confused. It was a novel and unpleasant feeling, but he felt he was entitled to it. John was speaking as if Sherlock weren’t right in front of him, as if, in his inebriated state, he had mistaken him for a complete stranger or maybe Lestrade or another of his ‘mates’.
But Sherlock was both insanely curious and not, had never been, a good man, and so he selfishly took advantage of John’s state as his heart pounded and his palms became damp with sweat. He lightened his voice and affected a slight northern accent.
“What do you mean, then? Why were you looking for a William?”
But John didn’t hear him or was perhaps beyond comprehending the question as he looked blearily into Sherlock’s face.
“Yes, brilliant. Brilliant and completely mad, but then so am I. I must be. William, my William, my soulmate you see, but not his. He’s not looking for me is he? Not looking for a John. His lovelace is probably brilliant too, couldn’t be anything less, probably scarlet or royal purple or maybe even gold most likely. Also most likely says Irene in it or James maybe. But not John, never John, couldn’t be John. He’d have said something. He’s like that. He can’t leave well enough alone now can he? Nope, not my Sherlock, not my William.”
Sherlock’s heart was beating triple time as the desperate hope choked him and he felt he couldn’t catch his breath. Jonathan Victor Trevor and William Sherlock Scott Holmes, stupid, stupid, stupid! He had always been Sherlock, always to differentiate him from Mummy’s brother Uncle William and he had forgotten his real first name. John was his, he was John’s and Sherlock could have cried for the sheer relief of it. But John was talking again and Sherlock hung on to every word.
“Can’t prove it though, was shot you see. ‘M left handed and the bullet went through my left side, nearly took out my heart. Took it out anyway, though, dinnit? Lost my lovelace, lost my proof, and even if I was his he’d never believe me without it. Oh, it was beautiful though. So many shades of blue like the sea and the sky and deep ice. Sheeerrrrrlock’s eyes are like that too. It shifted and twined around itself, like it was dancing and it looked like the frost you get on the windows in the dead of winter. Y’know what I mean? Course you do, everyone knows. Except him. Lost my lovelace, lost my William, lost my Sheeeerrrrlock.”
Sherlock scrabbled with shaking hands at the buttons on his shirt and ripped it open over his right side with his right hand as his left grabbed John’s jaw and tilted it down to see his soulmark.
“This! Was this it?! Was this what it looked like?! Please John, please look, oh please. No! No, no, no don’t fall asleep! John! John look! Just look, look at me! John?”
Sherlock’s voice broke on the last syllable. John’s head had sagged into his hand as his soulmate succumbed to the vast quantities of alcohol in his system and fell asleep. Sherlock choked back a scream. He gently let John’s head drop to his chest before rucking up John’s jumper and shirt with shaking hands. Maybe there was a trace? Just an atom of blue? But no, John had spoken the truth. Where the delicate swirls of blue should have been there was only a maze of scar tissue to mock him.
Suddenly Sherlock’s head lifted and he sprang up to take the stairs to John’s room three at a time. He tore into John’s things, flinging open the wardrobe and searching frantically. It had to be here, it simply had to be. John was sentimental, he would have it. Yes, there! There it was! Sherlock placed his hands reverently on the old, yellowed shoebox hidden away on the top shelf. He took it over to John’s bed and sat on the edge, then opened the box and gently, so gently, began sifting through the photos in it. He quickly found what he was looking for and floated mindlessly down the stairs, leaving the carnage behind him.
Once downstairs he stepped slowly, deliberately to the table and took his small magnifying glass from his pocket. Then he looked at the picture of a ten years’ younger, shirtless John in nothing but his camo pants and dogtags and gazed through the lens. He could just see it, could just make out the smear of blue across John’s left pectoral.
Right there, next to his heart, was a smudge of aquamarine and cobalt.
Sherlock had never loved the color blue more.
/////////////
John blinked his eyes open and quickly shut them, a heartfelt groan rising from him at the stabbing pain in his head. Dear God, was he dying? He tried to think back, his dry, swollen tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth as he wracked his aching brains for what the hell had happened last night.
Oh right, so not a criminal trying to bash his head in, but John’s own stupidity in trying to drown himself a glass at a time in cheap scotch down the pub. He winced and tried to roll over, but was thwarted by a warm body lying next to him. Confused, he looked up to take in his surroundings and paled.
He must have made it home last night as he was definitely in 221B, but how in the hell had he ended up in Sherlock’s bedroom and in Sherlock’s bed? He very carefully shifted his body, not wanting to wake whoever was behind him. He turned completely and froze.
There, lying completely dressed on top of the duvet, was Sherlock, and he was awake. John looked, shocked, at the silvery blue eyes looking back at him, eyes that were giving him the most intense stare ever. John began to stutter, but Sherlock quickly interrupted him.
“Good morning John. There’s paracetemol and a glass of water on the night table behind you. Please take it, clean yourself up a bit, and then meet me back in here. There’s something we need to discuss.”
As Sherlock’s eyes continued to bore into him, John swallowed ineffectively and then painfully rolled over and into a sitting position. He tipped the pills into his mouth and drained the water, nearly gasping in relief. Then he levered himself unsteadily from the bed, threw one last disconcerted look at the detective watching him like a hawk from the bed, and made his way to the loo to brush his teeth and attempt to feel more human. After cleaning up a bit and making sure his mouth was minty fresh and all sensations of cotton wool long gone, he hesitantly made his way out to the bedroom, fervently hoping that he hadn’t behaved abominably last night and was about to be evicted.
Steeling himself, he opened the door and took three stride through in as confident a manner as he was capable with a splitting headache. Then he stopped dead as his mouth opened in shock.
Sherlock was standing by the open window and drawing the blinds, leaving the room dim and comforting to John’s poor head. That wasn’t the shocking part though. The sight that had John still and salivating was the view of muscles playing in Sherlock’s strong, scarred back. He couldn’t look away from the miles of pale skin before him covering broad shoulders and leading down to a tapering, slim waist that disappeared into the black trousers that Sherlock was still wearing.
He must have made a noise, because Sherlock’s head turned as he gave a final tug to the drapes, showing John his profile and backlit by muted sunlight. Then, moving slowly as if in a dream, he turned from the window and showed John his left shoulder, flank, and then chest. John’s gaze immediately zoomed to the toned chest being revealed to him, desperate for a look at Sherlock’s lovelace.
Finally, Sherlock had twisted around enough to give John a glimpse of his right pectoral and the former soldier couldn’t help but gasp a choked off sob and place his hand over his mouth as he whimpered.
There, swirling and shifting, was a sight John had never thought to see again. It was the match to his own lost lovelace, the blues curling over each other in sinuous tendrils. Best of all, even from across the room, he could see the name, HIS name, woven in indigo lettering in the center of the changing colors.
He couldn’t help but move towards Sherlock in an almost sprint and raise shaking fingers to the warm, smooth skin of Sherlock’s chest. Sherlock’s eyes fluttered when John’s fingertips made contact; and his voice was hoarse and broken when he spoke.
“John…”
John whimpered and leaned forward, pressing a kiss to his own name and Sherlock gasped and his hands flew to tangle long fingers into silvery-golden hair. He whined helplessly when John’s tongue snaked out to taste the colors and his fingers tightened brutally to drag John’s face up to his own.
The kiss blazed between them as they devoured each other. Both men panted heavily through their noses; loathe to separate their mouths for even the moment needed to breathe. John smoothed his palms up Sherlock’s chest and then scraped his blunt nails lightly down again. Sherlock groaned and pressed even closer before lowering his hands and beginning to scrabble and tug at John’s shirt. He swiftly had the buttons undone and the offending garment stripped off of his soulmate’s body. John flinched away and Sherlock grabbed his shoulders to drag him back as he whined deep in his throat at the first contact of skin to skin.
“No John, it doesn’t matter. It’s still always been you and it always will be.”
John looks up at Sherlock with disbelieving eyes and Sherlock cups his big hands around John’s face and smiles with such pure joy that ten years simply fall away from his face.
“It doesn’t matter that your soulmark is gone because we belong together and there’s no other way this could have ever ended. You are my John and I am your William. That’s all that matters. That’s all that ever will matter.”
John’s eyes go wide and then he grins back, happy and complete.
They kiss again, but it’s slow and sensual instead of passionate and desperate. Sherlock pulls back and slips his hands from John’s face to clasp his hands and then leads him to lie on the bed. He pushed the doctor down to lie against soft pillows and smiles as John gives a sleepy blink. The he crawls in after him and pulls the exhausted and unresisting body into his arm and uses his foot to pull the blanket that lives at the foot of his bed up and over them.
John starts to protest, rubbing his thumb over Sherlock’s nipple, but the detective simply cradles his hand and stops the distracting movements.
“Shhh, my John, there’s plenty of time for that. We have the rest of our lives ahead of us. For now, you are feeling unwell and I admit I slept very little last night. We’ll rest and then we’ll wake and then we can take all the time we need. In fact, I do hope you haven’t made plans for the next few days, as I’m not going to let you out of this bed for at least that long.”
John gave a sleepy giggle and nuzzled into Sherlock’s shoulder, his left hand coming up to cover the beautiful lovelace before him. Then he yawned and smiled as Sherlock’s deep chuckle rumbled in his ear and shivered down his spine.
“Perhaps you’re right, love. You’ll need your energy after all.”
Sherlock laughed, a joyous, free sound and John joined him with carefree abandon.
They pulled each other even closer and settled down to nap, and as they drifted off to sleep, their lovelace danced happily to the music of their joined souls.
/////////////
There are a thousand legends, myths, and stories to explain the soulmarks. They stretch across the centuries, never quite capturing the truth of a soulbond, not completely.
After all, how could they, when every individual love story is the greatest ever lived?