Baker Street was quiet, perhaps for the first time in more than four years, in the week that followed. Not the peaceful sort of quiet that was domestic and gentle and content, but the sort of quiet that loomed and cast a shadow, dark and malevolent. The sort of quiet that you could taste on your tongue, seeming fine at first, but with traces of bitterness that burned like acid down your throat. Doctor and detective alike buried themselves so far into their work that they scarcely spent more than 4 hours a day together in their flat, and nearly always while John was sleeping.

Neither of them were sure how this mutual avoidance had come about, only that, after returning home from the Walker case, the air was charged with unspoken questions and accusations that neither man felt particularly inclined to address.

"Path to true love" indeed, John thought as he curled, more lonely than ever, beneath the covers of his bed. He really should have known. Life isn't always as simple as a Ping! and a kiss and a happily ever after; certainly not his life, and certainly not anything involving Sherlock Holmes.

It was hard to pinpoint an exact moment in which things began to go south. Immediately after The Kiss, John had felt wonderful, as if all of the tension that had been haunting him for years had finally eased. However, as the cab was returning the couple to their home at Baker Street, the tension steadily grew until it was more than double what it had been before. The full weight of their actions pressed into them and stifled them.

When they'd entered the flat, John was the first to break the silence.

"Well, I suppose this changes things."

Sherlock had stiffened but did not turn, refusing to look at him. He mumbled a swift and scathing, "Don't be ridiculous, John" and retreated to his room.

And that was, as they say, all she wrote.

Thus commenced seven days of worried glances and hasty retreats to avoid finding themselves occupying the same space. The one time they were in the same room together after the night of The Kiss had been three days afterwards. John had come home slightly earlier than usual from his shift at the A&E. The forlorn violin piece he had heard from the stairway cut off abruptly with the sound of the door closing behind him. Before he could comment, Sherlock was slinging on his coat and brushing past him through the door, leaving his violin and bow haphazardly strewn across the couch and a partially completed (and malodorous, always malodorous) experiment on the kitchen table that still remained there, untouched.

Really, honestly, what else had John expected? He'd spent the better part of four goddamn years pining over the bloody bastard, and suddenly knowing that they were soul mates was supposed to make everything all better? A nice and tidy Happily Ever After™ for the detective and his blogger?

Yes, John admitted to himself reluctantly. That's exactly what he had imagined. Even before he had known it was Sherlock, how many times had he thought "If only I would meet my soul mate!" while imagining a perfect ending for himself like some swooning, bad romance novel heroine? Christ, he was pathetic. And delusional.

As much as the ever-so-lovely matchmakers liked to boast, the TiMER wasn't actually the solution to all of life's problems and the harbinger of eternal bliss and perpetual meadow-frolicking. Even if two people were theoretically perfect for each other, the TiMER could not account for circumstance or, hell, free will. Yeah, it worked out for a lot of people, but there were some things even extreme compatibility could not reconcile. His alcoholic sister, Harry, and her estranged wife were proof enough of that.

And, Jesus, Sherlock had fucking deduced it who knows how long ago. He'd never said a word, never even hinted at it, as John had gone through girlfriend after girlfriend, and he had to have known that John wanted to meet his soul mate more than most anything else, because the git knows everything and he never said a fucking word. He got a TiMER installed as a method of solving a case, for fuck's sake! What else should one expect from Sherlock "Married to my Work" Holmes?

But John wasn't mad at Sherlock. Not really. He was mad at "fate" for pairing him with someone who didn't want to be tied anyone, let alone him. He was mad at himself for thinking The Kiss had meant anything.

On second thought, maybe he was mad at Sherlock. Who the hell announces they're your soul mate (and that they have apparently known this for some amount of time), gives you a fucking fantastic kiss, and then proceeds to blow you off and completely ignore you for an entire week?

John rubbed the heels of his hands over his eyes. He knew there was only one way he was going to get any answers.

"Aw, hell." John groaned. "We're going to have to talk."

Heart-to-heart conversations were never John's strong suit. As much as Sherlock liked to claim that he was a romantic, he tended to get quite worked up and flustered when emotions were heavily involved. This was especially true where Sherlock was involved, as emotional conversations with him were almost entirely unpredictable.

Nevertheless, John was a man with much resolve. And so it came to be that the determined doctor found himself sitting in his arm chair, surrounded by empty tea mugs, when Sherlock Holmes finally arrived home at 3 in the morning from wherever the hell he had been.

For his part, Sherlock, having seen the sitting room light on from the street, had quickly deduced the motive behind John's atypical night-owlishness (he was obviously conditioned by the army into a pattern of early rising, and typically found it difficult to sleep in past 8 or so, thus leading to a fairly early onset of melatonin production) and moved directly to his own designated chair upon entering the flat, not even bothering to remove his coat.

The silence was deafening.

"Well," Sherlock began after John's hand began to twitch, "Obviously you have something to say."

"You knew."

He cocked his head. "Knew?"

"Don't be coy, Sherlock. You said you knew. Anderson asked if you knew and you said 'Of course I did'." He gripped the armrests of his chair and sat with military posture.

"Hmm." The detective intended to handle this as he did most other conversations about emotions: by shutting down and being as aloof as possible. He could only hope that it would end soon.

"How long?"

"Excuse me?"

John could feel his blood pressure rising. "How long have you bloody known about this?"

"Oh. Right. How long. Yes." His hands moved to steeple beneath his chin.

"Well?"

"As I recall, I first suspected in the cab." A quick twitch of his lip. "My suspicions were confirmed by the end of the night."

John's patience was wearing thin as he ground out, "Which night?"

"I believe you called it 'A Study in Pink' or some such ridiculous name."

A beat of silence. "A Study in- Sherlock, that was our first case!"

He merely hummed in acknowledgement.

"No." John rose from his seat. "No, you don't get to treat this as if I'm exaggerating, as if my anger is unjustified. Christ, you knew, all this time and you knew and you never said anything. Not a thing. Why? You don't usually have a bloody filter, and yet you somehow fail to mention something so life-changing for four years?"

"No."

His eyebrows shot up. "No?"

"I assumed you were aware, being such an expert on romanticism. Clearly, I gave you far too much credit." Sherlock finally rose from his chair as well. "Besides, I fail to see what's so life-changing about this revelation. Honestly, John. We'll continue to cohabitate and solve crimes. Nothing need change."

"'Nothing need change'? Yeah, that's what you said last week, the last time we spoke, and now I feel like a guest in my own flat! Look at us, Sherlock, clearly things have already begun to change!" Before Sherlock could retort, John grabbed Sherlock's right wrist and held it up, moving his own left wrist so that their zeroed out TiMERs were side-by-side. "You see this, Sherlock? This fucking changes things!"

Sherlock yanked his wrist away and stumbled back a couple of steps. "I don't know what you want from me, John!" The mask began to fall. "It's not like I can undo it!"

"What?" John stuttered out as Sherlock began to pace.

"If this is about The Kiss, then I apologize! It was an error that I shall endeavor not to make again."

"I-"

Sherlock continued to pace and speak as if he hadn't heard him. "I am more than willing to be content with carrying on as we have for the past four years, and I give you my word that I will not do anything to make you uncomfortable. Do you really find our status as soul mates so repulsive that you feel the need to sever our partnership?"

John's eyebrows drew together. "Sherlock, I think we've been-"

The pacing continued. "I mean, really John-"

"Sherlock, sit down and be quiet!" His voice boomed with an authority that betrayed his military training. Sherlock's jaw clicked shut as he followed John's order without hesitation.

John took a deep, steadying breath and flexed his left hand before finding his own seat once more. "Sherlock, I think we've been misunderstanding each other completely."

Sherlock blinked rapidly, scanning John's face as he considered what that meant. "You mean… that is to say… you are not…"

"Upset that we're soul mates? Quite the opposite." He smirked cheekily. "I'm guessing you aren't upset either?"

With a bewildered look on his face, Sherlock replied with a simple "No."

The silence that stretched out between the two was no longer of a malignant sort as they processed the new information.

"Sherlock," John began, "I do have some questions, though."

"Naturally," he grinned devilishly, unable to resist his haughty nature.

"Oh, stuff it, you berk." He chuckled briefly before becoming serious once more. "You said that you didn't mention our being soul mate's because you assumed I knew. Why on Earth would you think that? I mean, for Christ's sake, I dated people!"

Sherlock shrugged casually, but looked away from John as he replied "I assumed that was your way of communicating that you were uninterested in pursuing a non-platonic relationship between the two of us."

"You thought that I was uninterested? You're the one who declared yourself married to your work that night! I, along with the rest of the world, assumed you were an aromantic asexual. Which, by the way, are you? I mean, I suppose, from what you've just said, that you aren't aromantic, but… I've told you before, it's all fine."

Sherlock turned his head as he attempted to suppress his embarrassment. "Yes, well. That was a miscalculation. No, I'm not aromantic. Or asexual, for that matter. I do experience the," he coughed slightly in an attempt to relieve some of the awkwardness, "attractions. I merely had no desire to act upon them. When I said that, I, of course, had no way of knowing…"

"Knowing what?"

"How invaluable you would prove yourself to be." John had never seen Sherlock Holmes blush before, but he thought that this might be closest he'd come in all the years the two men had known each other. "To my work and to myself."

Sherlock shook himself a bit, and began speaking quickly, as if listing off his deductions at a crime scene. It occurred to John suddenly that perhaps Sherlock's rapid-fire exclamations were not always his mouth vigorously to keep up with his mind, but, at least in part, a defense mechanism to steady and emotionally distance himself from difficult situations. "After I realized that you weren't aware that we're soul mates, it took me some time to reevaluate previous deductions. It crossed my mind that my kiss may not have been entirely welcome. I had, after all, rather forcefully initiated in the so-called 'heat of the moment'. It was completely possible and really quite probable that your response had been likewise."

"Probable?" John inserted a bit breathlessly.

The detective leaned back in his seat and glanced sideways at John before continuing. "You hadn't known of our status, and, judging by your reaction, hadn't even suspected it. Though you were attracted to me, and realized this, you hadn't expressed any desire to act upon it. During our acquaintance, you pursued relationships exclusively with females. Could have been a coincidence, but that was highly unlikely. I believed it suggested your lack of desire to pursue any of your male attractions, and your occasional attempts to rather dubiously dismiss your bisexuality by declaring yourself 'not gay' supported this. You even downplayed our platonic relationship on occasion. So, yes. Probable." He punctuated this remark with a flourish of his hand. "I presumed this suspicion to be confirmed when you kept your distance from me during the cab ride and proclaimed the apparent need for things to change. I then reasoned that I need give you the 'space' you so often desire following conflicts and allow you to approach me on your own terms. And here we are."

"I see," he remarked after some time. "You know," John said with a slight giggle, "for a genius, you really are quite an idiot."

"Emotions, John, are not exactly my area," Sherlock scowled.

"I didn't mean it like that. I'm an idiot, too." He grinned playfully. "What, no argument there?"

He grinned back and things felt, if for just that moment, utterly right. "None at all."

"What I mean to say is that, all of those things I did, all of those things I said, they were all because I assumed you had no interest in pursuing our 'non-platonic relationship'. And I didn't think we were soul mates because you're so you and I'm so me."

Sherlock narrowed his eyes. "Explain."

"Christ, Sherlock! Just look at us!" He gestured between them. "I'm the epitome of average: average looks, average personality, average intelligence. And you're practically on a different plane of existence: brilliant and beautiful and striking in every sense of the word. And I couldn't imagine a universe in which you could possibly find me appealing."

"And I couldn't imagine a universe in which I do not." They locked eyes briefly before Sherlock glanced away again. "John Watson, you are far from average. You thirst for and thrive in danger, yet you are kind and gentle. You look so unassuming, but you are one of the most lethal and intimidating men to cross that I have ever encountered. You are handsome and charming. You have a way of bringing out the good in me, even when there is none to be found. You fascinate me. You confuse me. You are able to tolerate me. That alone is an entirely unique quality." He smiled softly. "That is to say, John, that if either of us were to be undeserving of the other, it would, undoubtedly, be me."

In the silence that followed, John's wide eyes shifted down to his wrist, as he began the all-to-familiar task of lifting his left sleeve to expose his TiMER. He watched at the zeros continued to flash in precisely the way he'd always hoped they would and wondered how things could have possibly gone so differently from what he'd always imagined they would.

He rose slowly from his seat and reached out to Sherlock, grasping the taller man by the hand and pulling him up. John then lifted Sherlock's right sleeve up, held his left wrist next to it, and stared at their matching TiMERs as the blinked in unison.

"I was wrong," he whispered.

"You generally are, but about what in particular?" The words were lighthearted and gentle as he, too, watched the synchronized flickering.

John squeezed his soul mate's wrist lightly, and stroked his thumb over the area he knew the man's radial pulse could be found. "We are, in fact, perfectly suited for each other."

Sherlock smiled crookedly. "I do believe that is the definition of the term 'soul mate'."

John laughed. "You're a dick, you know that?" He slid his left hand into Sherlock's right, lacing their fingers together. "And, God help me, I am in love with you."

"Obviously." John rolled his eyes exasperatedly at the man's superior tone. Sherlock lifted their hands and placed a quick kiss to their interlocked fingers. "And I, you."

"Obviously."

And as they stood there, in the warmth of their flat, hands clasped together and the scent of tea and toxic chemicals in the air, John couldn't help but think that this was never what he had wanted. This wasn't a Ping! and a kiss and a happily ever after.

This was so much better.

A/N: And it's done! Honestly, I've been back and forth on whether or not to add to this story for months. I've written and re-written this so many times, but I've finally found a version that I like enough to publish. I really wanted to tie up all of the loose ends and clarify some stuff from the first chapter, and I sincerely hope that I managed it. Obviously, I still haven't edited the first part (I have a hard time stomaching reading my stuff after I've finished it) and this is the same. Hopefully I'll be back to edit both of them in the near future.

In the meantime, I hope you liked it! Please review if you feel so inclined. And, if you have any questions, feel free to ask in the comments, or find me on tumblr (there's a link in my profile).

Thanks for reading!

-Her Highness