Author's Note: This story was born from a desire to write something for John, who is one of my favourite Sherlock characters and yet who I have shamelessly ignored in my Sherlock writings up til this point. It ended up taking a life of its own and even surprised me by the end.

Character note: The man in the tan-coloured coat is a product of my own imagination, and he is just that - a man. His name would mean nothing to John, and so he has none.

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The Stranger's Pen

The rain falls like whispers all around him. Each drop is like a word or a letter, the softest ethereal touch that tumbles from a monotone sky and fills the air with its unintelligible meaning. For a moment, he holds out his hand, watching the rain collide with the lined, callous surface of his palm, breaking its speech upon his skin. He stares, and then, angrily, he flings the little puddle away. Because that's all he has left, isn't it? Broken whispers.

John Watson hears, but he doesn't understand, and so he shakes his head, dashing bits of water from his face and hair even though he knows it's a futile effort. He bites his lip. Damn rain. Should have brought an umbrella.

In lieu of that desirable object, he pulls his coat collar higher about his neck and quickens his pace along the spattered sidewalk. It's nearly deserted now; everyone with a bit of sense has either flagged down a cab or ducked under the shelter of a door or awning until the worst of the weather lets up. John has more than a bit of sense, but with that ridiculous obstinacy that has come to surprise even him at times, he chooses to ignore his better judgement. He walks on, head bowed, arms held stiffly at his sides with his fingers gripping the cuffs of his jacket as though to pull them down just a little further over his wrists. He probably looks like an idiot out here, soaking wet, features clenched against the fine mist rising from the pavement.

He's waiting for the light at a crosswalk, shivering now as the lovely, damp London cold finally begins to seep through his protective layers, when he hears a voice behind him. He ignores it at first – there's bound to be someone else waiting for the same reason – but it keeps talking, and eventually he makes himself care enough to pay attention to the actual words.

"Nasty day to be caught without a bit of shelter, 'ey?"

John turns. The man in front of him is taller than he is, wrapped in a long, tan-coloured overcoat and an expression of sympathetic affability. His face is rough and lined, partially hidden by a thin beard, but his eyes are warm, and what's more, his hand is extended and holding out towards John the refuge of a very large black umbrella.

For a few seconds, a stare is all John can manage, taken aback as he is. The man seems amused, for he lets out a soft chuckle that somehow manages to sound dry despite the pouring rain. He shakes the umbrella pointedly, sending a miniature shower down onto the slick edge of the curb. "Come now, 'tis no day to be standing about a refusing a friendly offer," he presses. "You're soaked, lad, and I've a mind to say you'll stay that way unless you take yourself out of this damp."

The lad catches John off-guard for a moment, and he blinks away a drop of rain. It takes him a second, closer look to realise that this fellow is likely a good deal older than he is, though he carries himself with the tall, easy posture of a man in his prime. His beard is auburn but streaked with grey, and the hand wrapped around the umbrella shaft is a patchwork of tanned vein and sinew.

John shakes his head. "No, I'm – fine, thanks." That doesn't feel like enough. "Really."

"Nah, you're not," replies the man, with a slight shrug of one shoulder. "To be fair, though, you're doing a damn good job trying to convince yourself otherwise."

"How did you – "

But John stops, breaking off before he can give himself time to think what he's saying. Too familiar. Erase. Back up, and try again. Mentally he filters through a number of alternative responses, but somehow, none of them seem to fit the situation, and in the end he settles for a faintly huffy silence, during which he has nothing to distract him from the rivulet of cold water now trickling down the back of his neck.

The man lets out another laugh, louder than the first. "You've a face like an open book, that's how," he answers, and despite the words, John can't find it within himself to feel offended. "At least to someone who's been sitting and watching life pass by for some twenty-odd years."

John looks at him again, taking him in, and this time, something clicks. "You were in the service."

"See? It shows." The stranger gives an approving nod, and John suddenly begins to wonder which one of them he's really talking about. "Now enough standing about, 'ey? This London shower won't stop 'til it's good and ready."

Feeling oddly at a loss, John hesitates, weighing his options. The light hasn't turned yet, and he has no clue how long it will be until it does. The man is right about the rain, anyway; as John glances up, squinting his eyes against the downpour, he is forced to resign himself to ongoing sogginess should he decide to stay on the street. Bloody fantastic. He knew he should have stayed inside today.

Pressing his lips together, he walks forward and ducks under the shelter of the umbrella.

Smiling but without comment, the man turns and begins walking. His steps are long and quick, and though he pauses every once in a while to allow for John's shorter gait, John finds that he has no trouble keeping up. After all, he reminds himself, he spent months in the company of a man who was not only much taller than him, but had an infuriating tendency to dash in random directions at top speed without – no, stop. He clenches his jaw. Not that road again. That road never leads anywhere you want to be.

"She's got a mind of her own, this city," the man says, seemingly oblivious to John's tension. The hand not holding the umbrella is now buried deep in the pocket of his coat. "Unexpected, like. Got a dark side, too, if you know where to look."

John glances up, slightly surprised. "Would you know?"

"Oh, that depends. I might."

He offers nothing more, and John is left in watery silence to contemplate what that might mean. His first instinct is caution, but thoughts of suspicion seem to shrivel almost as soon as they are formed. He is, he thinks, rather a good judge of character – definitely not as good as – but he is good, and he can't sense anything in this man's words or tone that should suggest to him a reason for fear. On the contrary, there is a rugged sort of hospitality about the fellow – a warm, withered flame that nevertheless draws others into his tiny circle of light.

John has seen men like him before. They were the keepers of hope in Afghanistan, the figures that the younger ones turned to when they found themselves hollow and floundering in an alien, shimmering battlefield three and a half thousand miles from home. With each passing second, John finds it less and less strange that this man, too, has seen such things.

They walk along without speaking, their shoes slipping and squelching on the near-flooded sidewalk. Rain drums a harder, more insistent rhythm on the outsized umbrella, and John finds himself wondering what their exact destination is – or if they even have one. He keeps trying to look at his companion, but the man's face is blurred by rain, and what little he can make out is calm and stoic.

"Fancy a cuppa, then?"

John starts and shakes himself out of some darker thoughts. "Sorry – what?"

"Coffee, tea, bit of both – anything so long as it's hot."

It takes a moment for John to realise where the man is pointing, and another for his mind to hurriedly detach itself from a line of thought he hadn't even meant to pursue in the first place. "I – yeah. I suppose." Breathe.

But it's hard. Because there's something about this stranger that reminds him of him, and he doesn't want it to, and he's trying to ignore it like he ignores the coats and the scarves and the cabs, but he can't, because he needs to see, he needs to remember, he needs to reach out and scrabble for a wisp of something, anything, that will pull him back to the reality he knows will never be.

Too much. Defences go up. Fall back, but don't think.

No. No, don't fall –

Five minutes later he is sitting in a corner café, hands gripping his knees as he watches water pooling slowly around a folded black umbrella belonging to a man he has just met and knows nothing about. He looks at the umbrella because he doesn't want to look at the man. He'll have to, but some poor sod named John seems to think he can avoid it if he waits long enough.

The watching – it works the other way, too, though, and those eyes, cold grey and piercing… he can feel them. John glances up once without meaning to and is met with the strangest combination of ice and warmth he has ever seen. Even he never looked quite like that.

"So, you do this often?" John asks, with an admirable pretence at normality. "Pick up random strangers off the street and take them out for a coffee?" He manages to work a subtle skepticism into the question that he's rather proud of.

"Oh, now and then," the man replies absently. Not even disconcerted. He leans back in his chair, but gradually, taking his time about it, and when he finally gets there he lets out a contented sigh. "You looked like you could use it, wandering about in that little lot" – he thumbs toward the window – "with nothing but that coat."

The coat in question is now draped over the back of John's chair; he can feel the dampness soaking into his shirt a little below his shoulder blades and he shifts uncomfortably.

"Plenty of people get caught in the rain," he points out, his tone short.

"Aye, that's true." The man nods sagely.

That was a big help. John looks at him, chewing on his lip, then abruptly leans forward across the wobbly little café table. "Then why are you bothering to – "

"The way I see it, everyone's got a story." The stranger has cut him off effortlessly, and what's more than a little aggravating, he's not even bothering to look at John now. His eyes are everywhere else, though, flickering from side to side in a blur that John has rather a hard time following. "Not everyone has a good one, mind," he adds, "but they've each got one."

He pauses as the waitress comes over and sets two coffees down on the table. He thanks her, politely and with that same odd smile he'd given John on the curb. John nods to the waitress out of habit, but it is without comment that he wraps his hand around the plain white mug and settles back in his chair, waiting.

Unfortunately, the man seems in no rush now that they're safe from the elements. He raises his cup to chest level, closing his eyes and apparently enjoying the feeling of aromatic steam curling around his face. Eventually, he takes a long sip (finally, John thinks) and sets the mug back down in front of him.

"That girl who was just here, then – take her, for instance. She's got a story."

John doesn't know what to say to that. He settles for a question."Does she?"

A nod, accompanied by a twitch of the man's bearded lips. "Everyone's got a story," he repeats. If there's supposed to be some subtle hint in that, John doesn't get it. "For her, I'd say she'll be picked up for a date at nine-thirty tonight. What do you think?"

John opens his mouth, but nothing comes out. Something's not working, and he has a sneaking suspicion it's the wiring in his own mind. What's going on? He's blown a fuse, that's what, he thinks furiously. He shouldn't be making this connection. Everything is different – the tone, the manner, the phrasing – but he'd still heard the words in someone else's voice, at least until the end, and that's what had tripped him up, really, because he wasn't used to having his opinion asked – God, no, he'd usually had to raise his voice to get his point across –

"I – don't know." He thinks he's said it out loud, hopes he has.

"Well, use your eyes, then. People don't, you know." The man gives a little grunt, sounding faintly annoyed for the first time. "Look at the way she's smiling."

John turns his head and takes a quick peek toward the counter. "A smile doesn't mean – "

"It does in this case," the man interrupts him again, and now his gaze is alternating between John and the waitress. "Reading faces… See how she looks down, just there? Hand's in her skirt pocket, checking her phone, I'd imagine. Waiting, nah, hoping is a better word, for a text from the lucky lad."

John has gone back to biting his lip again, unsure how he's supposed to be dealing with this encounter. No one had prepared him for this sort of thing, but he's a soldier, so he's supposed to be quick, right? Adaptable. But he's torn, torn between fascination and a strong desire to run.

"She could be waiting for anyone," he says, stalling for time while he attempts to sort through his muddle of thoughts. "Maybe, I dunno, her mum, a friend – "

The man snorts. "Does your mum make your face light up?"

That stops John short again, and for a long moment he simply sits there, mouth slightly open, thinking what an idiot he must appear to this man who is so different and yet so similar and who he still, still, knows nothing about except that he was a military man at one time. Because that's not something you can erase, John knows, and God, he's remembering again – stop it, John Watson, stop it –

But he can't stop the too-familiar question tumbling from his lips in a rush that sets his heart churning again.

"How do you know it's nine-thirty, then?"

"Easy. This place closes at nine, if you bothered to read the sign over there." The man jerks his chin toward the door, where John can see a rectangular outline of the café's hours posted on the inside of the glass, and, beyond it, rain still falling heavily.

"You know," John says slowly, deliberately, determined to get the words out, "a lot of people would think that's some sort of trick, or something. Knowing that. Being able to – figuring it out."

The man blinks irritably over the coffee that he has just raised to his lips again. "It's no trick, it's using your God-given senses for what they were intended. Only, the folk who do are so few and far between that it's become abnormal. Odd. Not right."

Freak. The word rankles in John's mind, and he swallows thickly. "I – knew someone who did the same sort of thing," he murmurs, looking carefully down at the mug cupped between his hands on the table. It's just conversation, he tells himself. Just words. "He was good. Could read people – almost anyone – just by looking at them."

"'Ey?" His companion looks over, expression suddenly attentive.

John wants to say more but only shakes his head. "It was a long time ago," he adds quietly, as though that's some sort of justification.

A long time ago. A hell of a long time, and not only figuratively. During the war, he had never been able to put a name or a description to the idea of his own personal hell – it was the odd sort of question that people asked, sometimes, one of those philosophical-but-not-really things, and he had always shrugged it off in order to listen to someone else's explanation – but here, four months in, he knows exactly what his hell is, and he is living it day by ordinary day, and it's so grey and mundane and so goddamn empty that it sometimes hurts just to breathe.

It hurts. Because breathing means he's alive, and it's real, and everything is real, except what really matters, and for one fleeting moment he almost prefers the nightmares before he somehow manages to pull himself together again.

"You now, lad – you've got a story, and I'm willing to bet it's a hell of a good one."

John jerks back to reality so fast that his body isn't quite ready for it, and his hand stumbles erratically to the side of its own accord. Left hand. Damn it.

Coffee is now spreading across one edge of the table (no longer hot, thank God, but it's still bad enough) and John mutters a vacant apology as he reaches for a paper napkin to soak up this stupid mess that he's made. He takes as long as he can about it, but there's only so much of the spill to clean up, and eventually he must meet the stranger's gaze again.

He shakes his head, once, firmly.

"Nothing ever happens to me."

It's a lie, a stark, uncaring lie, and they both know it, though John wishes otherwise. He watches as one of the man's eyebrows goes up, but the question he is dreading doesn't come. Instead –

"Nah, can't be so. I can see your story in that" – the fellow points to John's hand – "and that" – looking toward John's coat – "and in that." His fingers dart briefly in front of John's face before settling back to the table, and in the meantime, John has the horribly familiar sensation that he has just been X-rayed. His jaw tightens.

"Look, I'd rather not – "

"I wonder how many lives you're carrying around inside that head of yours." The man's tone is musing, and he's looking at John in a way that is more than a little disconcerting. "Lots, I'm thinking. You've got a line on that face for each one of them."

John stares. "Army doctor," he says shortly. "Sort of ends up that way."

"You like what you do, then?"

Strange question, that. John frowns and replies, "Yeah. While it lasted."

The man lets out a low sigh that, to John's ears, sounds almost disappointed. "Sort of makes me wonder why you're going to such lengths to hide from yourself, then. From everyone, 'course," he adds, and then points one brown finger across the table, "but yourself, aye, that's the most important." He fixes John with another piercing look. "And before you open your mouth to give me the old none-of-your-damn-business cutoff, just think about this, 'ey?"

All the same, he pauses, and John knows that he's been given an opening to stop the conversation right here if he wants to and that will be the end of it. One word, one shake of the head – but he doesn't. He says nothing, doesn't even move, and even later he's not sure why.

Something close to a smile flickers across the man's face, but it is gone in a moment. He leans forward, tapping his folded hands once, twice, on the surface of the table.

"Everyone's got a story," he says. "And everyone's got a pen in their hand, and even if it's not a red one, it's still a pen. You can't cross things out, but you can write more. And the one thing you've got to remember is to make someone want to read that story when it's done."

A full minute later, the man has gone.

John is sitting alone at a table by the window in a little corner café, watching the rain pour down onto the flooded sidewalk. He starts a little when the waitress comes back over to take his mug and he reaches for his wallet, but there's no need, she says, because his friend had already paid for them before he left, and hadn't he been ever so polite about it? John thanks her in an absent sort of voice, and by the look on her face he can tell she thinks he's quite a bit odder than his 'friend', but he's too confused (is it even confusion, what he's feeling?) to care right now.

Sighing, running a hand through his still-damp hair, John pushes back his chair and stands up. Still pouring. He's not looking forward to going back out in that. He reaches for his jacket and has one arm inside it before he notices –

The man has left two things.

A pen on the table, and a large black umbrella, folded neatly against the table leg and gleaming softly at John from its little pool of water on the café floor.

Many thanks, O wonderful Reader! If you have more of your precious time to spare, I would cherish any thoughts on my other Sherlock stories, especially for fans of Mycroft and Moriarty (though, I hasten to assure you, not together).

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