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It started with a ring.
A wedding ring, to be precise, that belonged to the late George Watson. His son, Dr. John H. Watson, stared at the plain gold band that he had found among his father’s possessions. He knew that his father had kept the ring when Martha Watson died while John was in university, but he hadn’t known that it had survived George’s move to the nursing home.
John had been on his first deployment when George suffered the stroke that left him incapable of living on his own. It had been Harry, John’s older sister, who made all the arrangements for the home. John rather thought that Harry had found a certain amount of satisfaction in being the one to decide where their father spent his final years, as he had disowned her when she came out as lesbian. However, with John otherwise occupied, there was no one else who could have done it. Harry had chosen a decent home, but it was by no means a luxurious place.
She had, however, left the house alone until John came home on his first leave. They spent his time at home clearing out their childhood house and getting George’s affairs in order. Harry had found their mother’s wedding ring in a box with important documents; John supposed that his father, though a gruff man, had loved his wife in his own way.
That love was evident in the fact that he had worn his own wedding ring until the day he died. Harry flat-out refused to make the arrangements this time—“I’ve given the bastard enough of my time, Johnny, it’s your turn.”—so John dutifully took the Tube to the nursing home to collect his father’s few remaining belongings. There was just enough of George’s money left over for the funeral arrangements and settling with the home. John would receive a few hundred pounds, which he would feel obligated to share with Harry. She wanted no part of his possessions, though, so John had binned or donated most of them.
That left him with the ring. He supposed he should keep it, as Harry had done with their mother’s, but, well, he had never been particularly close to his father. George was not one for father-son bonding, nor for emotions in general. And there was the fact that John’s army pension was barely enough to keep a roof over his head and food on the table. The meagre inheritance would be nice, but he could definitely use the extra cash from selling the solid gold wedding band.
“Are you going to stand there all day or are you going to come in and pawn that ring already?” drawled a deep voice from John’s left. He jumped and whirled to face the speaker: a tall, pale man with a head of curly dark hair wearing black jeans, a beat-up T-shirt, and a rather garish hoodie. He was slouching casually against the doorframe of the pawn shop John had been loitering in front of while he tried to talk himself into selling the ring.
“Sorry?” he asked, for lack of anything better to say.
“You’ve been standing there staring at the ring in your hand for almost a quarter of an hour. It’s a man’s ring, probably your father’s. You have doubts about selling it, because you like to think you’re responsible and respectable and should keep it for the sentimental value,” he sneered on the word sentiment, as though it were a dirty word, “but you weren’t particularly close to your father and you need the money.”
“How did you know all of that?” John demanded, half-spooked and half-impressed. The other man shrugged.
“All a bit obvious, really,” he said. “Easy enough to deduce by observing you and comparing your actions with those of others who come to sell family trinkets. You walked here to give yourself time to think about it, which means that you are fairly serious about selling it—your cane indicates that walking is difficult for you, but you didn’t take the Tube, which suggests that you wanted the extra time to talk yourself either into or out of it. Your clothing is all well-cared-for but several years old; you’ve been back in London for at least two months after your discharge from the army, but you haven’t purchased new clothes, so clearly you are low on funds. You look at the ring as though trying to find a reason to keep it; if you had been closer to your father, it would be an easier decision to make. So stop wasting my time and come inside already.” He made a sweeping gesture with one of his large hands that seemed to invite John into the shop. John, however, could only gape at him.
“That was amazing,” he declared. The man looked somewhat taken aback.
“That’s not what people normally say,” he admitted.
“What do they normally say?”
“Piss off.” John chuckled.
“Well, if I’m going to sell you my father’s wedding ring, it wouldn’t do for me to tell you piss off, now would it?” he said. He limped past the strange but incredibly interesting man and into the shop.
After five minutes of negotiations and calculations, John pocketed the fifty quid that the man paid him for the ring. He heard the bell above the door jingle as he turned to leave. The man who entered was large and broad; he immediately ducked down one of the aisles of merchandise when he saw that there was another customer in the shop.
“Your limp is psychosomatic, you know,” the proprietor told John. He turned back and grimaced at the man.
“I know,” he replied. “Doesn’t mean my leg doesn’t hurt like a bastard, though.” He nodded and limped out of the shop.
He was barely a block away when he heard a familiar deep voice bellow, “Stop that man!” He turned to see the large man from the shop barreling in his direction with a desperate look on his face. John didn’t have time to think; he dropped his cane and set himself in a solid blocking stance, lowering his right shoulder so that it would absorb the worst of the blow.
The man completely bowled him over, but John got a good grip around his torso and allowed his momentum to carry them both to the pavement. He twisted as they fell so that he landed on top of the fugitive. John may have been the smaller of the two, but he was solid, so he knocked the wind out of the other man. He took advantage of the moment to flip him on his face and yank his arms behind his back; one of his knees kept him balanced on the ground while the other put pressure on the man’s neck to keep him down.
“Well done!” called the pawn shop man as he skidded to a halt beside John and the prone man. “Yes, Lestrade, a very helpful bystander helped me apprehend him. We’re one block north of the shop,” he said into the mobile phone pressed to his ear. He shoved the phone into his hoodie pocket and pulled his hand back out with a pair of shiny silver handcuffs. “Would you care to do the honors?” he asked, offering the cuffs to John.
“You’d better do it,” John panted. “I don’t think I’d better let go.” The taller man shrugged and slapped on the handcuffs with what John considered a disturbing amount of relish. The captive shouted and tried to buck John off, so he applied more pressure with his knee.
“So, are you an undercover copper, then?” he asked. The other man’s eyes shifted.
“Not as such, no,” he replied. Before John could inquire further, a police car pulled up to the kerb next to them with its lights flashing but its siren silent. A harried-looking man in a crumpled suit clambered out and surveyed the scene before him.
“Are those my handcuffs?” he demanded. The other man shrugged.
“Hardly my fault if you didn’t notice they were missing,” he retorted. The officer sighed.
“One of these days, someone is going to arrest you, and I’m not going to do a thing to stop it,” he threatened. The tall man scoffed, and John thought that the threat sounded rather resigned, as though it had been made before and not carried out. “Right. And you’ve roped in an innocent bystander. Thank you very much, sir,” the officer said to John. “I’m Detective Inspector Lestrade. I can take over now.” Between the two of them they hauled the man to his feet, and Lestrade shoved him into the back seat of the car.
“Paperwork,” he growled, but the other man waved his hand in a dismissive gesture. Lestrade huffed, got into his car, and drove away with the siren blaring.
“Right, want to tell me what that was all about?” John asked the pawn shop man, who he was beginning to suspect was not, in fact, an employee of the pawn shop. He was rewarded with a brilliant grin.
“There have been a series of thefts on the other side of London,” he began. “I deduced that the culprits were systematically moving through the pawn shops this side of the city in an attempt to cover their tracks. This shop was logically the next one on the list, and I had a full account of the items stolen in last night’s robbery. I only had to wait for someone to turn up with one or more of the objects in question.
“Amazing,” John said. “So are you some sort of…I don’t know, private detective? That Lestrade bloke didn’t talk to you like you were an actual police officer.” The man gave him an approving look.
“You’re not nearly as slow as the rest of the populace,” he commented, and he made it sound like a high compliment indeed. “I am, in fact, a consulting detective. Only one in the world. Sherlock Holmes.” He extended one large hand, and John grasped it.
“John Watson,” he replied. “Pleasure to meet you, Mr. Holmes.”
“Sherlock, please,” Sherlock said. “After all, you aided me in the capture of a wanted criminal. And I have a feeling that you will make a most useful assistant in my work. We might as well be on a first-name basis.”
“Assistant?” John asked, lifting one eyebrow. “Who said anything about assistant? All I did was tackle a bloke.”
“And you did a commendable job,” Sherlock assured him. “You are unemployed at present, and you miss the excitement of battle. Your eyes are still gleaming with pleasure at the recent scuffle, and your leg gave you no trouble whatsoever during the entire procedure.” John looked down, surprised, and realized that he was standing unaided by his cane, which was still on the pavement a few meters away. “I take on private cases that interest me as well as helping Scotland Yard when they are out of their depth, which is always. I haven’t bothered with fees for them, but if I had an assistant to work out a system of compensation, I’m sure it would make a comfortable living. So, what do you say, John? Back into the fray?” He favored John with a wide grin that made his eyes light up and sent a jolt of excitement through John’s belly. There was only one possible response to this impossible man.
“Oh, god, yes.”
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It ended with a ring.
Four years after they met, three after they went from partners in crime-solving to partners in every sense of the word, Sherlock Holmes slid a plain gold band onto John Watson’s finger.
“I now pronounce you married,” declared the notary, and the two men leaned in to share a slow, sweet kiss as their friends applauded.
Later, when they had their first moment alone in what felt like weeks, John had a chance to look at his brand-new wedding ring more closely.
“Sherlock,” he started, “is this--?”
“Your father’s wedding ring,” Sherlock finished for him. “I had it resized, of course, and there’s a new engraving. I thought it was appropriate.” He looked slightly nervous, as if expecting John to take exception to the gesture.
John felt his throat tighten and tears prick his eyes. “You kept it all this time?” he choked. Sherlock took his face in his hands so that the two men were looking into each other’s eyes.
“It was the ring that brought us together,” he rumbled. “How could I have done anything else?” He brushed away the tear that escaped John's eye with his thumb and leaned in to kiss his new husband.