Sherlock only noticed the strange man during TV time- he was quite sure he hadn't noticed him before. He was sitting with Major Sholto, a curious old man who always tried to convince the other patients that the gunfire on the TV was coming from outside of the windows. He always caused quite a stir, that's why they only let the elders watch game shows or the weather station. Half of them didn't know what was going on anyway, they wouldn't notice a difference. They were delirious, all of them, however Sherlock felt like he couldn't say anything against them because he felt like he had just woken up himself, woken out of some very odd dream. Sherlock tried to look at the clock and yet he must have misplaced his glasses, for all he could see was a very blurry white circle on the wall opposite, providing nothing but absentminded ticking and no time whatsoever. Maybe it was early in the morning, maybe it was late in the evening, oh but no one noticed, not really, because it wasn't five o'clock, it wasn't twelve o'clock, it wasn't one o'clock...it was TV time. Sherlock hated growing old, he had always feared it as a child and now here he was, with his aching joints and his useless eyes, with veiny hands and annoyingly long ear lobes, degraded and destroyed from his younger more beautiful self. The thing is, no matter how old he got, he would still be treated as helpless, like a toddler, only with nothing to look forward to. He wished he was a baby, still with a life ahead, now all he and the rest of his fellow elders in armchairs had only the grave to hope for. It was never a sad occasion whenever one of them died, of course tears were shed and funerals were held, and their room was sanitized back to its white beauty and the dead were replaced just as quickly with another young one who had been dumped by their family. However when one died people weren't necessary mourning their loss, they weren't thinking about how much of a shame it was, how they had so much left in their life, simply because they didn't seem to have a life anymore. They had no family, at least not any family that actually cared about them, and no purpose. They withered here, they died here, and people cried because they were jealous of the dead. Everyone here wished they could just die; it would be a lot less effort. Whether or not death led to Heaven, Hell, reincarnation, or simply blackness, wouldn't it be preferable to this? A life of armchairs and game shows and Jell-O with children's bibs protecting their freshly ironed sweater vests! Oh if only these nurses knew Sherlock in his prime, if only these inmates (sorry, patients) had seen him when he was beautiful! They wouldn't treat him like this, of that was for sure. He had been beautiful, that was one of the only vivid things Sherlock could remember from his youth. He would never recognize himself; no one would at that, if they saw what he had turned into today, what a hideous monster that stared back at him in the mirror! And to think this withered beast had descended from such an angel. He used to have curly black hair, now grayed and thinning, he used to have beautiful, shocking green and blue eyes, now dulled and covered in cataracts, his white teeth were replaced with dentures and his cheekbones were hidden by sagging wrinkles, oh what a shame, what a tragedy! He had been the desires of women and the envies of men, presumably. He couldn't quite remember the details.
                "Why are my photographs gone?" Sherlock wondered as he sat in his bed, the blankets being pulled to his chin by a nurse who he didn't recognize. Maybe she was new. The frames that used to decorate his bedside table had seemingly disappeared, replaced with a bouquet of flowers that was already starting to look dead. These rooms were much too depressing than should be legal, the white walls made him feel as though he was in a hospital and the scratchy blankets made his chin itch as he tried to sleep, and now all of his photographs, gone! Stolen! He tried to remember what had been on them, people; presumably, he was probably in a couple. And yet he didn't know what they were, what an agonizing memory block!
"They got very dusty, remember? They're being cleaned." The nurse assured with a smile, tucking her lock brown bangs back into her little white nurse hat and going to push Sherlock's little slippers under the bed where no one would notice them.
"That sounds like a lie." Sherlock decided.
"Why would I lie to you? Now are your dentures out?" she wondered. Sherlock growled, however he barred his gums to show her that his teeth were very much misplaced. She smiled in satisfaction, smiling at him like he was a child who had remembered to pick up his toys or something. If only.
"Anything else I can get you Mr. Holmes?" the nurse wondered as she wandered to the door, only asking that question to be polite, having no intentions of course, to help him with any of his other whims. This was one of the very few places that existed where the young didn't respect their elders.
"Yes, nurse, could you tell me if we have a new patient here?" Sherlock asked quickly, his mind jumping back to the stranger he had noticed at TV time, a stranger who had stuck in his degrading mind for the remainder of the day. It was odd, that a man could make such an impression on him, and yet here he was, finding that man stuck in his vivid memory once more.
"No, no new patients. Why do you ask?" she wondered, walking a couple of steps back into the room and yet she made no efforts to look like she wanted to stay. She hovered half way to the door, as if ready to make her dashing escape as soon as this conversation had ceased.
"There was a man...a man I've never seen before." Sherlock murmured, balling up some of the blankets in his wrinkled hand in annoyance, he didn't like feeling stupid, or delirious. Her smile made him feel stupid.
"Maybe you could describe him to me?" the nurse suggested, obviously doing her best to help despite her lack of caring. Sherlock sighed heavily, trying to think back to the man and what he had looked like. He remembered the moment, and the spot in which the man had been sitting, and yet for some reason that man somehow blended in with the rest of the men whenever Sherlock tried to pull out any describing features. They were all old, all bald, all wrinkled, how could he describe that man when he looked like every other man here? But there had been something; he knew there had to be something, maybe not physical but most certainly emotional about that man that separated him from the masses.
"I'm tired now." Sherlock said flatly, rolling over in his bed with some difficulty to try to cue the nurse to go away. He had given up on the hunt; he would try to find the man tomorrow. The lights went off and the nurse left, and Sherlock slept with the hopes that the strange man would still be there tomorrow.

In the morning Sherlock stood apprehensively in the dining room, leaning heavily on his nurse who was trying to talk him into walking over to the table with the strange man. She had identified him as John Watson, and yet Sherlock couldn't seem to think about where he might've heard that name before, it didn't ring any bells, and yet she assured him that John had been at this nursing home just as long as he had. Curious. In the end he forced her to sit him at an empty table, close enough to the table that John was sitting in so that Sherlock could glance over and watch him, but far enough away so that he would never notice unless he was staring right back. Breakfast was always a miserable affair, soggy pancakes and half cooked sausage links, all cut up in such fine pieces that it might as well just be blended in a smoothie and slurped up. This was what dentures were for, was it not? So why were they treating these elders as if they had just had their tonsils removed? It was miserable, and it was becoming quite lonely, however Sherlock's continual glances at John made breakfast ever worth it. It was a very odd attraction that he was starting to feel, something that made him want to curl into a little ball of denial, however there was something there, buried deep in his chest, that was reminding him about the beautiful things about John Watson. It wasn't his physique, no he was just as wrinkled and prune like as the rest of them in this horrible place, it was more of an emotional attraction. Sherlock didn't know what separated this John Watson from the rest of them, but there was something, and for some reason no matter how hard he tried he couldn't stop himself from glancing momentarily over at that man, that wrinkled old man, the hallowed out shell of a beautiful, able bodied man. That was the tragedy of growing old, no one appreciated their youth, they had taken it for granted until they wished they could return. Men usually thought they would stay strong forever, they thought their faces would never wither; they thought their glory days would maintain until well into their eighties. They were right, for the most part, however once they got to their eighties they were usually dropped off here, and they had to stare at their reflections in the darkness of the blank TV screens and wonder if they recognized the forgotten hag that was staring back at them. The problem with this unusual attraction was its timing in his life, Sherlock hadn't expected to come across his soul mate this late in life, in fact he wasn't sure he hadn't found his soul mate anytime before this. He was confused, of course, and apprehensive to try to start up any sort of relationship at this crummy old retirement home. Was it worth it, really worth it, to try to talk to John, try to communicate? Or would it be best to just sit back in this wooden backed chair and wait, wait for John to notice him, or simply wait for one of them to die? It wouldn't be long now, and certainly no temptations came from a corpse buried in the ground.

"You're Sherlock, am I right?" asked a voice in front of him, an unfamiliar voice and yet a voice that began to set off some sort of fireworks display in his heart. Sherlock almost felt as though he were choking on the sparks and the smoke as he looked up and saw that John Watson had somehow snuck over from where he was seated to stand above Sherlock, leaning on one of the chairs so as to support one of his hips. Sherlock blinked, looking at him as if wondering what sort of scheme he was conjuring up.
"I'm sorry...how do you know me?" Sherlock whispered, almost shaking with anxiety as he tried to avert his eyes in the politest of ways.
"I've been here for a while Sherlock, I know everyone's name." John assured. "I'm not overly accustomed, however, to getting stared at all throughout breakfast."
"No, I wasn't..." Sherlock took a deep breath, his eyes wide and staring fixedly at the table before him. He felt John's eyes bearing into his soul, he felt him staring right back.
"I wasn't staring at you." Sherlock lied in the quietest of all voices.
"Oh, then I stand corrected. Maybe it was another man." John muttered, however he sounded serious. Maybe he was senile, maybe Sherlock would get away with it after all?
"Yes, you must be mistaken." Sherlock agreed. John sighed heavily, finally pulling out the chair on which he had been leaning and sitting down heavily, inviting him to sit with Sherlock as if he somehow ruled over this dining room and this nursing home. Sherlock wasn't going to complain of course, he was certainly thrilled to have such clientele; however he was beginning to feel just a little bit terrified. He wasn't prepared to face whatever feelings he's been feeling, and it seemed as though this strange man was fully prepared to examine his soul head on.
"I'm not delirious, if that's what you're hoping for. And I'm not accusing you of anything, I don't care that you were staring, I'm just wondering what the fascination might be." John admitted casually, staring at Sherlock with a smile. He seemed to see much greater things in Sherlock than Sherlock saw in himself, because those once sparkling hazel eyes seemed to glisten with admiration and with knowingness. It was almost as though he were interrogating simply to reassure himself of the facts he already knew full well.
"I was just trying to recognize you, that's all." Sherlock admitted in a quiet voice, keeping his gaze averted to the table, obviously he had already had a well enough look at John. He couldn't see much of the table since his glasses were somewhere other than on his face, and so whatever lines and grains in the wood that would've made staring at it much more interesting were just blurs, unrecognizable blurs.
"Do you recognize me then?" John asked carefully, and Sherlock could feel something of an intense gaze on himself. He ignored it, however he found John to be just a little bit hypocritical, considered he had just called Sherlock out for staring while he was now staring himself. Maybe there was a difference between staring across the room and staring across a table, however Sherlock was every bit as uncomfortable as John had claimed to be before.
"I don't." Sherlock said simply. "How could I?"
"Well I've been here a while, as have you. I thought maybe we'd have...crossed paths, at least once before." John admitted with a shrug, tapping his stubby, cracking fingers against the table and smiling. Sherlock actually tried to smile back, for he had looked up just in time to see John barring his dentures at him, and so he grinned very forcefully with his lips and dropped his head once more.
"No, I don't have any friends here, and I'm sure I would've remembered someone like you." Sherlock admitted with a murmur, catching himself just in time to regret his words and have nothing to do about them.
"Someone like me?" John carried.
"Anyone." Sherlock corrected quickly.
"What makes someone like me memorable?" John asked rather teasingly, leaning over the table and stretching out one of his hands to tilt Sherlock's head up, pushing on his chin so that their gaze could meet once more. A great writhe went through Sherlock's body and he recoiled from John's touch, as welcome as it was it was rather shocking, and so he didn't know what else to do except withdraw.
"Please um...please don't." Sherlock muttered, to which John just nodded, pulling his hands away and looking quite upset. He got to his feet quickly, at least as quickly as men in their old age could, and bowed his head in sorrow.
"My apologies Sherlock." John murmured, looking genuinely apologetic as he walked back to his own table, his head bent low and his feet shuffling slower than normal. Sherlock was left at the table feeling rather bad about himself, he had just managed to chase off the one man in this accursed home that he actually wanted to have around.

A/N: Merry Christmas (and Happy Holidays) to my dearest readers and followers, thank you for all your support! This is my Christmas (and other holidays) gift for you all, and you'll get part 2 for New Years! I hope you enjoyed, and have a wonderful day!