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She had always wondered why she had half a skull and crossbones tattoo on her inner wrist. Well, she knew it had to do with soulmates, and that when she met hers it would be filled, but why a skull and crossbones? She was interested in forensic pathology, she supposed, which made the morbid tattoo more apt, but the crossbones? That was a pirate thing.Still, long-sleeved shirt and oversized, frumpy jumpers covered the mark on her wrist, and it kept people from asking nosy questions. Everyone, or at least almost everyone, had half a tattoo on her wrist. Her father had been an exception, not having a tattoo on the underside of his wrist at all, but he had loved her mum and would have gladly given her up if she’d ever found her soulmate, but she loved him too and they’d had her and a bit of a life together before he died.She’d always wondered if he never had a mark because he was fated to die before his soulmate found him. Morbid thoughts like that had kept her awake at night for a long time after his death when she was a young girl. Now she just ignored anything to do with fate and whatnot and focused on cold, hard facts. Science didn’t scare her because science was known yet ever-changing, and nothing was set in stone.She’d just started her post at Barts, observing the current specialist registrar for a time before she took over the duties so Dr. Tambor could go off and work on other aspects of medicine. She had some time at this post before it was her own time to go off and settle in another aspect of medicine for research purposes, but she was determined to enjoy this post while she could.“Tambor!” she heard a man yell as the doors to her morgue flung open. She had the scalpel in her hand and turned, ready to strike, when she felt a burning on her wrist. She dropped the scalpel and covered her tattoo with one hand while she watched the young man in the purple shirt and Belstaff coat do the same. “Bloody hell...”“Soulmate?” she squeaked out.After a moment the pain receded and he looked at his wrist, pulling down the sleeves of his shirt and coat to do so. “Why is it in colour?”She frowned, then looked at her own. The other half of her tattoo was filled in now, but it was purple. Then she looked at him and this feeling of...something...swept over her. “Love at first sight.”He avoided her gaze, turning without ever looking at her. “I can’t...it would be a distraction...you could...” He murmured those words as he turned on heel and left the morgue. She felt her heart shatter at that; her soulmate didn’t want her. Didn’t even want to look at her when they were fated for love at first sight.Never before had she hated this soul mate system so much…
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She found out the man who had run away was named Sherlock Holmes and he was a right arse to everyone. When the other staff at the hospital found out they were not only soulmates but fated to fall in love at first sight, condolences were given and offers of drinks and coffee and dinner, as well as a few doctors offering to wallop him a good one, were given to her. It made her broken heart feel a bit lighter, having gotten some new friends out of the ordeal.But he still didn’t want her, and that hurt.She half-hoped he’d come back for whatever he wanted from Dr. Tambor, but he didn’t. She did meet the detective he worked with, Inspector Lestrade, and Greg, as he had asked to be called, went on a rant about how pisspoor Sherlock’s manners were. He had half a tattoo on his wrist, he said, but he’d married his wife anyway. They weren’t always happy, but who would give up the chance at love at first sight? Sherlock was an idiot, he’d said, and she agreed. He offered to get her a pint that evening and to introduce her to some of the members of Scotland Yard, and she told him the pub the others were taking her too and invited him to bring his team and join them.The evening went well; drinks were shared, stories about her soulmate and themselves and funny stories and case stories and medical stories, and by the time she poured herself into a cab she knew two things: one, she’d found a good group of mates to surround herself, and two?Sherlock Holmes could keep himself far far away. If he didn’t want to see her and feel that love at first sight, fine. She’d found her soulmate, he didn’t want her, and that was that. She’d move on. Wasn’t the way it was supposed to be, but look at her dad. He’d found happiness with someone who wasn’t his soulmate.But when she got to her flat she saw a note on the door. She pulled it off and let herself in, turning on the light and setting her purse on the table in the foyer. She opened the note and began to read.
You deserved better. I’m an arse and a high functioning sociopath, and I’m sure you’ve heard all sorts of stories. But I can’t afford to fall in love now, not while this case is going on. Please give information to Lestrade, and when it’s over, I’ll make myself known.
It was initialed S.H. and she wondered why he had bothered. Why say he would make himself known at a later date when she already knew he didn’t want her? It was crueler now, with the note, than it had been before, and she felt tears prick at her eyes again before she crumpled the note in her hand and dashed them away.No. She wasn’t about to cry over Sherlock. Not again.Not ever again.
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She heard a muffled banging outside her office door the next day and was only moderately surprised to see a blindfolded Sherlock using a cane to come into the morgue. “You really are a prat, aren’t you?” she asked sourly.“Lestrade refused to pass along the results,” he said in a similar sour tone. “He said I had to quote ‘man up’ and come see you. But he didn’t say I had to see you.”She rolled her eyes. “You know, I fell in love with you yesterday but right now all I want to do is throttle you. Or better yet, taze you while you’re in a puddle.”He was quiet for a moment. “Not exactly big on the feelings of love there.”“No, not at all. I can separate my emotions from my job and maybe even the rest of my life. And if you can’t, then I don’t want to be with you anyway. My dad didn’t marry his soulmate and he was happy. I don’t know why the same can’t apply to me.”“The whole soulmate thing is rubbish anyway, I suppose,” Sherlock said thoughtfully.“Exactly. No one knows if it works perfectly every time, and as Greg said, he’s a non-soulmate match in a decent marriage.”“She’s cheating on him with a tennis instructor, but I don’t tell him because he wants it to work,” he said quietly.“So you do have feelings,” she said softly. “And you can recognize your actions might hurt people.”“I thought the note had proved that,” he said with a frown.She was quiet for a moment. “I’d heard stories before I got it. A lot, from some of the staff here at Barts and the Yard and...I wasn’t in a favourable mood to give you charity at that point.”“I blundered, then,” he said with a sigh.“You can fix it, though,” she said. She moved closer to him. “Close your eyes.”“You’re going to take the blindfold off,” he murmured.“Yes. If you want to I can go over all of the evidence with your eyes closed but really, it’s ridiculous. It’s not like you’re going to want to shag me here in the office. You’ll just feel warm for a moment. That’s all I felt.”His lips quirked up in a slight smile. “You surprise me. I thought for sure you’d make me open my eyes once the blindfold was off.”“It’s your choice. I didn’t have one, but...you deserve one if you think it will make an impact on this case.” She stood in front of him and raised herself up to reach the knot behind his head. She undid the knot carefully and let the blindfold fall. To her surprise, Sherlock hadn’t closed his eyes, and she found herself staring into the most beautiful bluish hued eyes she’d ever seen. The warmth was back, but that was all it was.“I don’t want to shag you,” he said slowly.“Alright, good first step.”“I’m not even inclined to kiss you at the moment.”“Not as good a step but I suppose--”“Later, though, that might change.”“Oh, good.” She gave him a smile. “Now. What did you want from Dr. Tambor, and what exact body do you need information on?”His lips quirked up again. “You do amaze me. Business first, even after...” He moved his hand between the two of them. “That.”“As I said, it’s not much more than a warm feeling. Maybe it will grow in time, but right now, business is what matters. My business is doing post mortems and yours is solving cases. We can sort out the personal later when lives aren’t on the line.”His smile grew wider. “And I think I’ll find the soulmate thing isn’t rubbish at all,” he said. “But I needed a report on Clarence Smith, and I need to see the body of Tabitha Hedland.”“I’ll get the report first, and you can look at it here in the office while I get Tabitha ready for viewing,” she said. She went to the computer and found herself working with a small hum. Maybe first impressions weren’t all they were cracked up to be after all...
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She wasn’t surprised when he swooped out of the morgue after viewing both the report and the body, but the wide smile seemed awfully genuine, and the soft kiss on the cheek seemed uncharacteristic but it made the warmth inside her warmer. She didn’t hear from him again until she was about to leave, and he was in her office with a coffee.“How did you know I needed one of these?” she asked, taking a sip. Not her regular order, but she appreciated the sweetness and the extra shot of espresso. “I have a case study to dig into tonight.”“I didn’t know your order but I erred on the side of you craving something sweet.”“Next time, substitute white mocha for hazelnut, and have a bit of caramel added, and then you’ve got me.” She had another sip. “But you were close, I’m impressed.”“I have a habit of being able to scan people and get the pertinent facts. My other thought for your coffee was plain mocha, so I still would have been wrong. I’m good, but not always correct.”“I’m still impressed.”“I suppose I should bid you good night since you have more work to do,” he said.“I can have takeaway sent to the flat and you can...join me?” she asked hesitantly. “I mean, it’s not a messy murder that I’m looking into, it a study about psoriatic arthritis, but...”“I’d be honored,” he said, visibly relaxing at her invitation. “And we can talk?”She nodded. “Maybe I’ll put off the study for a night to get to know you better. She glanced at her wrist. “Are you into pirates, by any chance?”“I was as a child, though I can’t really remember if it was due to the pirates being mentioned to me in an interesting way or whether it was seeing the half of the tattoo on my wrist every day.” He pulled his wrist out and the purple tattoo was still there, though it was fainter now. Hers was as well, she had noticed, once he had looked at her. “I thought you had an interest as well.”“Well, I like the Pirates of the Carribean movies,” she said. “But I always thought it was a skull regarding my interest in the dead.”“It would be interesting to find out,” he said. “But we can save that for after dinner.”She smiled brightly at him and nodded. “I think I’m going to enjoy getting to know the you that you don’t show others,” she said. He gave her a small but heartfelt grin of his own as she gathered her things and they made their way to the lift. Somehow, she had the feeling maybe Sherlock Holmes wasn’t all that bad of a person after all...