A/N: I'm not usually a fan of supernatural kinds of things, if you can even call it that, but when the idea popped up, I really wanted to give it a try, so I'll see if there's any interest here ;) Slash of course, you know me. This is probably going to be a fic on the longer side, but I'll see where it'll lead me. Hope you like it.

Disclaimer: Nothing's mine – really, it isn't.

Somewhere a Clock is Ticking

Chapter One: 23

Tony let his head fall onto the back of his couch, sighing loudly. He hated when it appeared - the feeling of utter loneliness that was lingering within him even though he wasn't even lonely himself.

He rolled up the sleeve of his shirt and watched the numbers tick down on his forearm. He had that kind of digital clock engraved there ever since he had been born and they were mercilessly showing him the countdown to when he'd meet his soul mate. Everybody had it, at least that's what his mom had told him and he had yet to encounter somebody who wasn't imprinted like that, though he was sure there had to be people out there who weren't.

When he was a kid the thing scared him to death sometimes because it kept changing numbers so quickly. One day there would only be twenty-four days left to live for him before meeting his own soul mate and it was therefore getting his hopes up only to crush them the next day when it would show him almost eighty years to get there. Nobody knew exactly what changed their numbers, but Tony's theory was that if your own soul mate didn't want to be found by his potential other, they would just hide away in another relationship or else. As a kid he liked the idea of challenging that system, too, liked to think that he'd just choose somebody else and that he'd be happy with them despite them not being his. But as time went by he witnessed too many happy unions, so many matches made in heaven that he had given up on this plan.

Yes, he wanted to meet his soul mate, he really did, but he just had no idea how to find that person. It didn't exactly make things easier that nobody had an idea if it was a man or a woman that you'd fall in love with. So you could fall for every single human being on earth and sometimes Tony thought that it would be impossible to find that somebody, that somebody he was supposed to be with forever. What was even scarier was the fact that once your soul mate died, your own numbers would turn to zero. It meant that you had lost your chance of true love forever and as scary as the thought was to actually find them, it was much more frightening to lose them without ever even having known them.

He had seen one to many people whose clocks had stopped ticking from one moment to the next and there was nothing that could be done about it. Sure, they would fall in love with somebody else, but they would have no chance if their love interest met their rightful other half. It was depressing watching them fall again and again. Tony had always pitied those people because there was nothing else to do really, even though some of them managed to be content with life, loved their jobs, their friends and kids. Sometimes Tony really wondered if he'd be so okay with everything if it were him.

Sighing, he watched another minute tick down on his clock. At the moment it only read twenty-three days and a couple of hours, but that didn't exactly get his hopes up. He had been down to one day a couple of years ago, in 2001 sometime, only to be changed from one second to the next to thirteen years and a couple of days. The clock hadn't changed ever since, but he didn't know whether that was anything to go by either. It was sort of depressing really.

He let out another sigh when a particular violent wave of loneliness washed over him again. He was sure by now that the closer he was getting to meet him or her, the more he could feel their emotions. He was pretty sure that he wasn't the one feeling lonely at the moment. He had just had a very nice dinner with Abby and the Palmers. He felt right at home right now, felt like everything he really needed was right there. He had a fantastic job, great friends and a great confidant in Gibbs, too. He had no real idea when or how that had happened, but it felt too right to question it. In short, he really, really liked his life at the moment and there was no reason why he'd feel lonely at the moment, but he had learned to live with the mood swings lately. There was no chance of not doing that anyway, so why fight it?

Shaking his head and grabbing the remote for his TV, he turned it on and switched through a couple of channels before he settled on an ancient western movie. Yeah, this felt like home more than ever and something suddenly settled within him. The feeling of dread and loneliness suddenly gave way to something else and Tony had the insistent feeling that this was exactly what he was supposed to be doing right then. Maybe his other half was feeling the exact same way, was maybe even doing the exact same thing than he was. It was a comforting thought and he sighed once again, out of contentment this time, as he settled back on his couch, watching Clint Eastwood bullshit his enemies.

***
Only a few miles away from him, the exact same movie was switched on in another living room and for an hour or so everything seemed to be normal and special at the same time.