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The boxes were damn heavy, and John was tired of hauling them down the rickety flight of stairs to the street. The living room was dead silent when he passed by, but then, what did he expect? Fanfare, pleading, some sort of loud and weepy goodbye? Sherlock wasn’t going to apologize, and John was past the point of caring.
It was dull and grey outside, and it might have been poetically fitting if it wasn’t usually that way in London. He let the door swing shut behind him a little louder than necessary, then gave the cabbie a hand loading the boxes into the car. It was kind of sad, really – he didn’t even have enough to need to open the boot up. John had always lived and packed light, and after Afghanistan, that had seemed to mean that he lived light enough that he could get up and flee at a moment’s notice.
For a while, he had almost thought that he’d found a place to put roots down. But then, Sherlock was right, and he was a blind idiot.
“Now I know this might be a novel concept to you, but people going out generally don’t insult their significant others to within an inch of their life.”
“Well, it’s hardly my fault that you can’t see what’s in front of your nose!”
“That’s not the point, Sherlock! You don’t have to pretend like I’m a genius, but I’m not supposed to run out of fingers for how many times you’ve called me an idiot today!”
“You’re the one always going on and on about honesty. The least I can do is be candid.”
He climbed into the back seat next to the box that had the leaves of his potted plant poking out the top and buckled his seatbelt. A muttered address to the cabbie up front, and then they were off and rolling. The door of 221B Baker Street disappeared out the rear window. John didn’t watch it go.
They pulled up at a hotel, hardly a fancy place, but it was just about all John could afford at the moment. He had been working extra hours at the hospital to pull in some extra income, and now that he wasn’t working cases at all hours of the night with Sherlock, he could actually manage to stay awake for the shifts. They unloaded the boxes onto the sidewalk and John passed the cabbie a few bills, just enough to cover the fare and a mildly respectable tip.
After the cabbie drove away, it took John four trips to get all the boxes up to his room on the fourth floor. His key was old and worn, and he had to wrench it just right to the left for it to open. The room was at least habitable. It was obviously coming on to its years, and it was Spartan, but it was clean and it had both a window and a heating unit, so that was good. John knew that if he cared to look in the bathtub, there would not be a small colony of dead frogs chilling on buckets of ice. The thought was simultaneously a relief and a tragedy.
“The least – the least you could do?! No, no, I’m afraid that’s not it. I go to the shop, I do the tea, I cook the food, I get the takeout, I do the laundry, I clean up your messes, I even got you your shipping of bodily remains permit, and the least you can do is be candid about my idiocy?!”
“It’s not as if going to the shop is such an excellent measure of IQ. If you hadn’t noticed, I’ve been a bit busy around here with important things.”
“Oh, I see.”
“Do you really.”
“I’m not important. That’s frightfully clear.”
With a sigh, he arranged the flowerpot on the too-small desk by the window. The tepid sunlight coming through the glass might be enough to keep it alive. At this point, John couldn’t help but feel that it was on its own for that one. He could barely be counted on to keep himself together, let alone support a single living thing depending on him. It was a blessing he’d never decided to have kids.
He unpacked his toothbrush in the bathroom and his clothes in the closet before sitting on the bed The corners of the sheets were crisp, tucked in neatly at the edges. The bedding was harsh, starched for appearances rather than comfort. A glance around the room proved rather beige. The walls were the unimpressive beige that hotels thought were unoffensive, the furniture was a weak sort of beige wood, the bedding was cream-gone-beige from the wash, and the lone piece of cheap auction-art on the wall showed a tea-colored café scene. He was in a beige hell.
It wasn’t a hard decision to grab his wallet and hike to the nearest pub. He didn’t need to be shelling out for a cab when he was already paying out the nose for a shitty hotel, not to mention that he could use the exercise. The faintly distant taste of smoke in the air and the amber lights warming the wood paneling made the place feel like more of a home than it really should have. John settled down on a stool near the end and ordered a pint from a bored-looking bartender. As he sipped and watched the minuscule bubbles dance their way to the top of the glass, he wondered exactly what he’d done to end up here.
“Now you’re misconstruing everything I’m saying.”
“Am I? Because that’s not how it looks to me. I can be your boyfriend, or I can be your nanny, or I can be the guy you put down to make yourself feel better, but you only get to pick one, Sherlock. And I’m not so convinced that we’re in agreement about which one you’re looking for.”
“You knew exactly what I was like when we started this – “
“Yeah, but somewhere between you rescuing me and me killing a man for you, I kind of got the impression you actually cared. My mistake.”
When his glass was beginning to run low, his phone beeped in his pocket. He nearly didn’t bother to look, because all of his texts were from Sherlock anyway, and he was hardly in the mood to listen to that. But eventually he did tug it out and flip it open, only to discover that it wasn’t Sherlock at all.
Didn’t take you for the emo type, the text read.
John frowned at the screen for a moment, but the number was unlisted and although he was clever, he wasn’t Sherlock, and he couldn’t figure out at a moment’s notice not only the sender’s name, but the colors of the shirt they were wearing.
Who is this? he sent back, pausing for a moment before sending.
Don’t recognize me now that I’m not chirping in your ear? Really, I’m hurt.
Moriarty. John realized that he should have been afraid. Moriarty was texting him, God knew how he even got his number at all. He knew where he was and that he was drinking and feeling sorry for himself. That meant he was watching him somehow; could he hack into the CCTV feeds? But as frightening as the situation should have been, all John felt was weariness. He was tired of these games. All he wanted to do right now was to drink another pint, and if Moriarty had shown up at the pub just then and there, John would have told him that in person. He might have followed it up with a right hook to the nose just for good measure, he admitted to himself, but that was only reasonable, and after that he would have left well enough alone and gone back to his glass.
I don’t know why you’re bothering. I’m not a threat to you anymore. As he sent it off, he knew it was true. Sherlock was the one who had hunted down Moriarty in the first place. Sherlock was the one Moriarty had sought out personally as his only truly capable adversary. John had just been the bait, one more pawn in the great game of Fuck My Life that someone had apparently signed John up for without his knowledge.
His phone beeped again. He flipped it open idly with one thumb.
True, it said simply. God, even a murderous lunatic was agreeing with the pointlessness of his existence. Bang-up successful life, John. Just right on.
He stared at the phone for the next five minutes, wondering if he should respond and morbidly curious if Moriarty would text him again if he didn’t say anything. Nothing happened. After a strange look from the barkeep, he finished off his beer, paid, and took the long hike back to his hotel.
He still kept his pistol on him, just in case. Part of him thought it was ridiculous. He wasn’t working with Sherlock anymore, dashing around London after criminals and actually needing a weapon for self-defense. But the other part of him was just so used to having it around, between Afghanistan and Sherlock, that it felt like he was missing a limb when he went out without it. And he just knew that the one day he would need it would be the day he decided to finally leave it at the hotel.
So he simply pretended that he was a normal man, going to the shop, going to work, going back to the hotel to look through apartment listings. And it was funny how quickly he’d really thought of it as pretending. He’d been a little different when he’d come back from overseas, and living with Sherlock had been like tossing oil on a flame. He was still very good at getting along with normal people, but it always felt like he was a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Get the broccoli. Get the instant noodles. Smile at the woman with the pram. Nod to the man at the cash register. Pretend like he hadn’t shot a man in cold blood. Pretend like he hadn’t exchanged text messages with a murderer who happened to take him hostage a year ago.
He was excellent at pretending.
The papers said something about a new cocaine smuggling ring; they mentioned Sherlock Holmes in passing, but it seemed that the last three attempted busts had been washouts. John was mildly surprised for a little while, simply because Sherlock was usually anything but consistently wrong, so the case must have been different. But he had to force himself to stop thinking about it like that; he would start to want in on the case, and wanting in on the case meant calling up Sherlock, and he would sooner gnaw off his own leg.
Grisly image, that. Was that from Sherlock’s influence, or did he naturally have that streak of red in him?
He found himself feeling strangely flat. The adrenaline was gone. He’d been lost without it after the war, and now he was just as adrift after Sherlock. He volunteered for some emergency room surgical shifts to make up for it, elbow-deep in blood, sewing up internal bleeds and pulling out bullets. Saving lives. It did help. He could feel himself brightening up a little bit on the shifts, walking a little straighter when the others on his team were beginning to droop from the wear-and-tear of all the violence they were swimming in. It got to the point where the Chief of Medicine asked him to switch to permanent emergency surgical rotations, simply because it always seemed to bring the best out of him, when it brought the worst out of others. John accepted, of course, because John liked making people happy and helping the hospital run smoothly. John also liked the feel of it, but there wasn’t anything wrong with that.
He was settled on the couch in the doctor’s lounge when the news flicked to the image of DI Lestrade. An attractive, if rather plastic, newswoman was holding a microphone out to him with a perfected concerned look. Her teeth were hideously white. “So, Detective, now that your preliminary leads are out, do you have any new plans?”
Lestrade looked uncomfortable. “We’re consulting all possible sources to find a new suspect. I assure you, we’re doing all we can to find this killer.”
“I’m sorry, killer? I thought you were investigating a drug ring.”
“We are. But we now have reason to believe that the drugs have been laced with poison and are being sold deliberately.”
“Oh, dear!” Her incredibly smooth forehead couldn’t quite manage the wrinkles necessary for a completely shocked expression.
“But as I said, we’re pursuing all available leads. We’ll find him.”
“I see. Well, Marissa, back to you.”
The screen flipped to another attractively plastic woman, this time a blonde, who smiled widely at the camera and promised a full update on the football matches. John reached for the remote, but before he could grab it, his phone beeped in the pocket of his scrubs.
That one was more fun than a barrel of monkeys!
John stared at it for a minute in disbelief. He was going crazy. That was why all of this was happening. His fingers were clicking out another response before he even knew what he was doing. That was you. You’ve got the drug ring poisoning people.
Ding ding ding! Gold star! The doctor is IN!
Why are you telling me this? This was the point when he should have just ignored the texts and moved on with his life. Maybe after getting a new phone number. But he had always been a curious man, and somehow this felt more like Moriarty was toying with him than threatening him.
Your ex is no fun at all to taunt now that you threw his ass to the curb
John raised his eyebrows slightly. Was that so. He suspected it wasn’t out of grief.
“So you’ve had it with me, is that it? Doctor John Watson, finally giving up on the freak?”
“You can’t make me into the bad guy here, Sherlock! I’ve done everything for you! All I asked for was a little bit of honest respect!”
“God, you sound insipid.”
“I’m sorry that I’m not interesting enough for you! But you know what? You won’t have to deal with my – my vapid remarks any longer!”
“Good! Perhaps I can finally put myself to real use, then!”
“You – Fine! Have a wonderful fucking life!”
No, it definitely wasn’t grief.
So you’re taunting me instead? THAT makes sense. He was back-talking the crime lord of London. Back-texting the crime lord of London? Something was wrong with him. Something was very wrong with him, most likely a severe lack of a will to live to see tomorrow. He should have that looked at.
Next best thing. He’s entirely lost his sense of humor
Well, he had his head on a plate already. Moriarty was watching him, he’d tracked down his phone number, and he was interested enough in him to be texting. If he was going to die, he may as well have a few parting shots along the way. You say that like he had one to begin with.
The reply was nearly instantaneous that time. LOLLERCOASTER! True dat :D It was so ridiculous in so many ways that it tore a startled laugh out of John unexpectedly. There were more things wrong with that text than he could count on all his fingers and toes, but that was most of why it was so hilarious. He thought of Moriarty, with his pasty white face and over-emphatic eye-widening, saying it, and he couldn’t help but chuckle again.
He slid his phone away and went back to work with a smirk that made the nurses smile at him a little wider.
After that, it was all sort of downhill. It was remarkably easy to forget that the somewhat melodramatic, always a little off-kilter texts that pinged into his phone were from a crazed killer who had only recently strapped a bomb to his chest and tried to blow him into smithereens. John would have thought that it would be harder to forget that sort of thing, but strangely, it wasn’t. Moriarty didn’t sign his texts, and he certainly didn’t talk about the Pool Incident. Apart from the occasional tangential references to the various crimes he and his syndicate were committing, it was almost like John was talking to a normal person. Someone he’d met off the street. Perhaps he’d run into them at the shop, when they’d reached for the same box of cereal. Perhaps he’d accidentally smashed into their bicycle while driving home, exhausted, from work. Perhaps he had simply smiled across the room and made a funny face.
John wasn’t really sure, but it was fun. And it was harmless, wasn’t it?
He hadn’t expected Moriarty to actually show up.
He was filling out a few release forms at the front desk when Moriarty sidled in as if he belonged. He wasn’t dressed in his Jim from IT costume, but nor was he all spiffed up in his suit from the Pool Incident. He looked… startlingly normal. Slacks over trainers, a fitted tee under a casual sport jacket, and a disarming grin on his face.
John very nearly dropped the folder he was holding, catching himself only at the last instant to prevent himself from looking like a total fool.
Moriarty sauntered over, hands stuffed loosely in his pockets. “Afternoon,” he said, as if nothing was wrong with that. And part of John, the objective, logical part of him, told him that for all Moriarty was concerned with, there probably was nothing wrong with it. After all, he’d just spent the last three weeks trading texts with the man. It wasn’t necessarily a leap to assume that it would be okay to see him in person.
And yet, the other part of John, the part that remembered when Moriarty had drugged him, had tied a bomb to him, pushed a bug into his ear, and made him dance like a monkey in front of Sherlock - that part of John thought there was rather a crucial difference indeed between texting Moriarty and seeing him face-to-face. So that part of John wasn’t at all surprised when he only managed a partial response of,
“What- what the hell are you doing here?!”
“Would you believe me if I said I needed a checkup?”
“No,” John said flatly, in a tone that brooked no argument. When was it exactly that it had become okay for him to disagree with a psychopath to their face?
“Nahhhhh,” Moriarty replied, with a strange sort of grin. “Didn’t think so. Worth a try!”
For a moment, John could only stare at him. This wasn’t happening.
Apparently, it was. Moriarty put two hands on the counter and hopped up onto it, legs dangling off the side where he began to swing them aimlessly. “So this is where you work. No wonder you’re still bored.”
“I’m not bored. And you’re not supposed to be here. Why are you here, again?”
Moriarty seemed to have become selectively deaf since the last time John saw him, because he skimmed over the last question entirely. “Don’t be silly! Everyone’s allowed in a hospital!”
“Except possibly you, because I suspect you’ve got about fifty wanted counts on you.”
“Nope!” He popped the ‘p’ enthusiastically, beaming. “Not a one of ‘em sticks. See, I’m actually good at the whole crazy-murderer-for-hire life path, that’s the rub.” He said it with the same sort of voice a normal man would have used to talk about the latest football scores, dismissively and factual. After he finished, he glanced around the waiting room, where patients sat silently, pacing and waiting for their own prognoses or their family’s. “Cheese on rice, it’s quiet. Who died around here?”
“Uh… lots of people Lots of people have died around here, and more are probably going to, so they’re all a little stressed.”
Moriarty took a long sniff in, loudly, his nose wrinkling. “Riiiiiight.” He drummed his fingers on the countertop. “Well. Sucks to be them.”
John rolled his eyes, snapping the clip on his clipboard shut and stuffing a file into the outbox. “Look, since you still haven’t told me why you’ve decided to show up in the middle of my shift at the hospital for no apparent reason, I’m going to go back to work.”
That failed spectacularly to produce any sort of real answer from Moriarty, not that he’d really expected it to. Instead, Moriarty just smiled crookedly. “You know, most people would be calling the cops right about now. But you’re just chatting. You’re even cracking jokes at me. Why is that?”
“Yeah, well, if you were that interested in killing me, you would have done it a while ago. We’re in the middle of a crowded hospital, which doesn’t seem like your style for ambushes. And besides, if you did try anything, I’m trained in hand-to-hand combat and I’m armed. Since I don’t see any of your convenient thugs hanging around here to back you up, I could probably take you down with me. And I don’t really feel like dealing with the cops today, so, there it is. I guess I’m just not most people.” He tucked his clipboard under his arm, raising his eyebrows at the crime lord perched on the counter before him. He felt particularly unimpressive, making that sort of speech while dressed in slightly stained scrubs and old trainers, but once he had started, it was kind of hard to stop. And despite the strangeness of making that statement, once it had left his mouth, he felt that it was oddly true.
Moriarty laughed, a keening sort of giggle, holding his steepled hands in front of his mouth, completely unable to contain his childish delight. “Aren’t you just! Here you are, threatening me casually with a concealed-carry weapon – tell me, Doc, is it even legal for you to bring that in here?”
The moment of stiff silence from John was a most definite ‘no.’ He had thought a moment ago that it wasn’t possible for Moriarty to smile any wider. He was wrong.
“And an illegally carried weapon! Oh, this is beautiful. Just beautiful.”
John looked around awkwardly at the waiting room only a stone’s throw away to make sure nobody was hearing their conversation. It appeared that Moriarty wasn’t causing enough of a scene to get a fine, upstanding doctor with an illegally carried gun arrested, though.
“How about we cut the games and you tell me why you’re here?”
“Fine, fine, ruin my fun. It’s not nice to rain on somebody’s parade; didn’t your mother ever tell you that?” John cast him a significant look, eyebrows down, and turned to leave. Moriarty stopped him just before he did by continuing, “I just wanted to ask – are you bored now?”
John stopped, stilled for a moment. Moriarty laughed behind him and hopped off of the counter. “Just some food for thought, Doc.” And with that, he sauntered out of the hospital, leaving John standing in the hall.
The chilling part of it was, Moriarty was right. This was the best he’d been since leaving Baker Street.
The next text came a full week later. John thought about ignoring it. He managed to get through an entire shift and a half without looking. He did a lovely emergency appendectomy, he repaired a punctured lung, pumped a suicidal woman’s stomach, and sewed up two young idiots that had gotten into a knife fight. But the entire time it felt like his mobile was burning a hole in his pocket. It weighed on his hip, such a warm heaviness that he finally gave up and flipped it open.
The text wasn’t anything important. They usually weren’t. It was a snarky joke about the chip and pin machines, and John hated the chip and pin machines, wanted to smash a cricket bat through them sometimes, and that meant that it wasn’t his fault when he texted back.
It felt distantly like he was signing on to something, but didn’t know what exactly it was.
The next Monday, he walked into the doctor’s lounge, nodding a brief greeting in passing to the male nurse lounging on the couch as he headed for the fridge. It was only as he was reaching for the fridge door handle that he did a double-take and whirled around.
“You!”
Moriarty grinned, not a male nurse at all, but he had gotten his hands on a pair of scrubs in the ubiquitous sickly mint green shade that they all wore, and he had kicked his heels up on the coffee table. At John’s outcry, he smiled and wiggled his fingers in a little wave.
“Me!” He rose to his feet, pointing at his chest with both hands.
“You’re… impersonating a male nurse.”
“Spot on!”
“… Why are you impersonating a male nurse.”
Moriarty widened his eyes comically. “To get into the staff lounge, of course! Why else?”
“And you wanted to get into the staff lounge to… see me. You could have just found me at the front desk like you did last time.” And John knew that was the wrong answer. The right answer was to tell Moriarty that he wasn’t to see him again, period. He wasn’t sure when he’d started supplying all of these hideously wrong answers, but it all seemed to happen when he was around Moriarty.
“But where’s the fun in that? I’ll tell you – nowhere! Because that’s no fun at all! Look, I’ve even got a little stethoscope, and – one of these things, whatever they are.” He held up an otoscope, flicking on the light that funneled through the tiny point at the end. “Funny… light poke thing.” He held it up to John, pointing it into his ear and peering through the lens at the other end. John batted his hand away.
“It’s an otoscope. A pneumatic otolaryngoscope, to be precise.”
“Otoscope! Otoscope, otoscope, otoscope, funny name, from the Greek ‘oto’ for ear. You doctors, always with the Greek and Latin.”
And if John was momentarily stunned by the reference, he would have liked to think that he recovered rather admirably. Sometimes with all of the text-speak and the scrubs and finger wiggles, he forgot that Moriarty was enough of a genius to take on Sherlock Holmes and live to tell the tale. An insane genius, but a genius nonetheless.
“Yes,” he said slowly, drawing out the vowel sound as his mouth caught up to his brain. “That would be it, yeah.”
“And you know these sorts of things, because you’re a good doctor.”
John paused, once again struck speechless. It was funny, really. Moriarty had tried to kill him, but he was still quicker to compliment him than his ex-boyfriend had ever been. He wasn’t sure what that said about his life and his relationships.
“Whiiiiich brings me to my point!” Moriarty passed a glance to John briefly. “Yes, yes, I have a point, I know you’re big on points.” He punched John’s arm, a little harder than necessary, but in a sort of friendly, manly way. The slightly off way he did it made John think that it was something he’d seen people do on television, but hadn’t actually tried on anyone before John. “I want to hire you!”
There must have been a record for shocking Doctor John Watson the most times in under a minute, because Moriarty was clearly racing for the gold on that count. “You – you want to what?!”
“You can be my doctor. Private practice. Just me and the boys.” He cast a slow look around the staff lounge with a critical gaze. “Be a sight more interesting than this dump.”
“You want me to be your personal physician.”
“Yep. Considering my line of work, it’s rather handy to have someone around at all times that won’t go running off to the police.”
Oh, God, John thought.
“Oh, God,” he said.
“Is that a yes?” Moriarty said cheerfully.
“That’s an ‘I can’t believe you’re honestly suggesting that I turn to a life of crime,’ that’s what that is!”
“You wound me!” He clasped both hands over his heart in a melodramatic pose. “You wouldn’t be a criminal. Accessory, at best. You’d just be providing your Hippocratic services to a very… specific clientele.”
“Specific clientele. By that you mean you and your henchmen.”
“Oooh, henchmen, always loved that word! Right up there with ‘minions.’ It just tastes nice when you say it, doesn’t it?”
“What exactly makes you think I would ever agree to that?”
“First,” he said, counting off his points on his fingers, “it’s loads of fun what we get up to. I mean it, really, loads. It’s like every day is Christmas! Second, I pay way better than this place ever will. That flat you’ve been living in is kind of cra~amped,” he said in a sing-song voice. “Third, criminals get dental, or didn’t you know? Fourth, did I mention every day is Christmas? Well, Christmas with explosions. The best kind of Christmas!” He laughed, tucking his hands into his pockets and rocking back and forth on his heels.
“Right. Look. I’m going to go back to work,” John said, pointing to the door of the staff lounge, “and you are going to go back to… work… and both of us are going to forget that you asked me this, alright?”
Moriarty was silent for a moment, watching him with an eerily piercing stare. For a moment, John thought he was going to say something insightful, but then Moriarty just shrugged and clapped him on the shoulder. “Well! You know how to reach me!” And with that he popped the otoscope back in his white lab coat pocket and left.
John sighed as the door swung shut. It took him a minute to remember that he had come in here to fetch his lunch, not just to talk to strangely curious criminals. As he sat down at the particleboard table and munched on the same peanut-butter and jelly sandwich he’d eaten for lunch every day for the last year and a half, he reassured himself that he’d made the right choice.
It was funny, though. Once he actually had options, as insane as they were, it felt like he was seeing his life with new eyes. When he woke up in the morning at the crack of dawn to shut off his blaring alarm, he thought, I could wake up later if I wasn’t working for the hospital. When he spread the peanut-butter and jelly out on his usual wheat bread in the morning and bagged it for lunch, he thought, I could actually have time to eat a real lunch. When he greeted the same harried, frustrated nurses at the front desk with a smile, he thought, I wouldn’t have to pretend I like them. When he sat in the break room, listening to his coworkers talk about the latest soap opera, he thought, I wouldn’t have to listen to this load of crap. When he read over his patient summaries for the same old broken bones and internal traumas, he thought, It could be so much more interesting than this.
He’d been happy with this life before. Or, if he was being honest with himself, he’d at least tolerated this life before. He’d been content. Ish. He would have been able to stand doing this for the next few decades of his life. But that was when he didn’t have a choice in the matter. Now he did, and suddenly it was like the veil had been ripped off of his life, and all the gold and glory was revealed as nothing more than piles of dust and shit.
The thought occurred to him that Sherlock would never approve of this new career path.
But then, they were over and done with, and that bridge was burned, so what was stopping him?
Does the offer still stand?
His phone pinged to life only two minutes later. You bet your bottom dollar it does! :)
What was he getting himself into?
He watched the keys on his phone for what felt like ages before asking, What do I do now?
You leave it to me. Duh
So he did. He went back to work as usual, cutting and sewing and filling out endless paperwork. On Thursday, his supervisor called him aside.
“John, I just got your letter of resignation. I’m so sorry to hear that we’re losing you!”
“I’m… sorry to be leaving you?” he managed. He hadn’t written a letter of resignation.
“Oh, aren’t you sweet. I’m sure they can put you to good use in Cardiff. I know that we’ll be missing a wonderful doctor, though!”
“Dr. Millinger, you’re too kind. I know I’ll miss all of you, too. You’ve been great colleagues.”
She smiled warmly at that and patted his arm. “Let me know if there’s ever anything I can do for you.”
“Of course. Thank you.” With that, he stole away from her office before he could be called upon to bluff further. His fingers found his phone blindly in his pocket.
Am I actually going to Cardiff?
Of course not. But now you get a farewell party
John laughed a little. That was true. And with an official resignation, nobody would be asking questions about any disappearances. His phone beeped again with a follow-up message. Save me a piece of cake! lol
They held the farewell party two weeks later. John had spent the interim saying goodbye to coworkers and realizing exactly how little he’d actually liked spending time around them. It was a relief, as he smiled and nodded and told them that he’d miss them, to know that he only would have to deal with them until his last day. Then he would never have to see one of their faces again. There was a God. The party went the way most office parties tended to – lots of cake, lots of fake goodbyes, lots of bad music, and a fair heaping of drunk coworkers. He managed to slip out halfway through by pretending he had a phone call. He took a piece of cake with him, as promised, and drove home.
As he pulled out onto the road, the thought occurred to him that he was unemployed now. He’d quit the socially acceptable job he had. He was now a freeloader on the dregs of society, and if anyone knew the job he was about to actually take, he would probably be arrested.
But when he rolled down the driver’s side window and felt the wind in his hair, all he did was laugh.
It wasn’t until noon the next morning when there was a knock on the door. He put down his newspaper and opened it up to reveal two men in discreet, but practical dark clothing. If he looked carefully, he could just make out the silhouette of shoulder holsters beneath their coats. One of them nodded and greeted him respectfully by his title of Doctor, and they led him out to a car waiting on the street. John had been expecting something sketchy, a suspicious looking white or black van like they always had in the movies, but it was only an unobtrusive four-door stationwagon. It was probably for the best. Moriarty knew what would make his men blend in, and it was tolerably crappy cars that didn’t look like a pedophile would be behind the wheel.
They drove him through town, and John was pleased to note that nobody blindfolded him or tinted the windows. He could easily track their motion, and he made a few mental notes to key landmarks in case he had to find it again. They parked outside of an electronics repair shop. They slipped through the racks of screen protectors and surge strips to an ‘employees only’ door at the back. Behind it was an incredibly usual staff room, filled with the expected overly priced snack machine, grungy fridge, and horrifying inspirational posters. The tall one who had greeted him swiped an ID card in the vending machine and punched a series of numbers. The machine rolled several feet to the left on a silent pneumatic motor, revealing a doorway that the short one unlocked.
John whistled low under his breath. It was so Scooby Doo of them, hidden doorways and secret code entries. It felt very Moriarty.
They headed down the hall, locking the door behind them. John could see the little line of light at the bottom of the doorframe disappear as the snack machine returned to its position. The décor on the other side of the break room was suddenly anachronous. The floors were carpeted. The walls were painted an attractive shade of sage green, and instead of the cheap, flickering fluorescents from outside, there were muted, recessed lights in intervals along the ceiling. They finally emerged into an office, lined with shelves, drawers, and bookcases of every shape and size. Several doors led off to who-knew-where, as they were unmarked. There was a small TV on one side of the room playing an old roadrunner cartoon on mute, the coyote silently pitching off of a cliff and landing with a cloud of dust on the ground.
Moriarty was behind his desk in a swivel chair, reading over a set of files on a slender laptop. He looked up when they entered and twirled a few loops in his seat.
“Welcome, welcome. Mi casa es su casa! You like it?”
“It’s very… evil genius-y,” John said, for lack of a better adjective.
Still, it seemed to do the trick. Moriarty beamed and hopped out of his seat. With only a few side tangents, he pulled John down one of the side hallways. He opened a door with a flourish, and suddenly John was in the middle of a miniature hospital ward. The floor was gleaming tile, peppered with drains to allow thorough sanitation. There was a bay of cabinets and storage on one wall, all brushed steel and glass. John opened one of the doors to find that they were already stocked full of medicines in alphabetical order. A closet beside the cabinets stored medical equipment and machinery. There was a small operating room separated by a little scrub airlock, and on the other wall was a row of white hospital beds, each attached to their own vital monitors and separated by hanging curtains.
John ran his hand over one of the countertops, fingering the edge of a tool tray on which autoclaved instruments had already been arranged. He looked back to Moriarty. “You got all of this for me?”
“Of course,” he said, and for once there wasn’t a trace of guile in his voice. “We take care of our own.” And as far as Moriarty was concerned, there were no further explanation needed.
“I… thank you, Moriarty.” It was strange to be thanking him, when a year ago he would have happily strangled him if he’d gotten a chance.
Moriarty made a tsk-tsk noise with his tongue and waggled a finger at him. “Jim. You work with me now, which means we’re friends.” And it seemed that for Moriarty, it was as simple as that.
“… Right. Jim. Thank you, Jim.” The name felt oddly light on his tongue, a wisp of crisp air that disappeared all too soon. But, he thought, he could get used to all things in time.
Mori- Jim looked pleased. “You’re most certainly welcome!”
Yes, he thought. He could definitely get used to this.
It was strange at first, working for Jim. He had heard Jim reference crimes before in passing, but now suddenly he was deep in the thick of it. There were orders being given to henchmen right next to him, discussions of grisly murders and tortures over tea, and smuggling shipping maps left out on the desks when Jim had to pop out for a quick evidence cleanup. The first few times he overheard something, he had grimaced a little and pretended he was out of earshot. But it was interesting, at the very least, and soon enough he was asking questions, like ‘Why not use an inhaled ether instead of an injected sedative?’ or ‘How is it that you evade computer traces?’ or once, memorably, ‘Where is it you get your dry cleaning done? Some of these bloodstains just won’t come out.’ They were, of course, only stains from surgeries, but Jim had still gotten on an expression as if John had just given him an early birthday present.
Sherlock had always cast him derogatory looks whenever he asked questions like that. He was always a level above John, always had to step off of his pedestal to waste his time to help John catch up. But Jim always explained things; he actually seemed excited at the opportunity to inculcate John with his vast criminal experience.
And so John learned.
He learned how to create business fronts so normal and complete that nobody, not even the tax inspectors, would suspect. Jim was brilliant at that; John didn’t even realize for a month that he actually owned the electronics shop they were linked to. He learned how to spot a sniper from a mile away, and more importantly, how to find their blind spots and get to them before they got to you. He hoped he would never have cause to use that knowledge. He even learned how to remove prison tattoos to avoid police identification.
And above all, he kept busy. Oh, did he keep busy. He saw everything – burns, electrocution, poisoning, bullet wounds, strangulation, evisceration, even a man who had been forced to eat his own intestine until he collapsed and bled out. That one had even a few of the minions retching in the bin, but John just calmly made his death report and cleaned up the body for disposal.
He kept all of Jim’s men in good health, whether that meant simple preventive checkups, or if it meant desperately hunting down antidotes and tourniquets in his portable kit before his patients died on the floor of an empty warehouse. He was saving the lives of killers, of masochists and thieves and traitors and kidnappers.
It was funny how it was hard to judge people you lived with for that long.
John also kept track of Jim himself, with monthly checks – more frequent than the henchmen, but then, Jim was also in more danger of assassination – and remedial work when necessary. During one of his checkups, his phone rang from the pocket of his coat, hanging in the closet. He frowned, pausing from where he held a tongue depressor in Jim’s mouth.
“Oo hunnu edit?”
It was only through years of medical experience that John correctly deciphered that as ‘You gonna get it?’ With a shrug, he withdrew the tongue depressor, tossed it in the bin, and headed to the closet to search for his phone. Behind him, Jim opened up the bottle of cotton-tipped sticks and began building a log cabin out of them with the utmost of care.
“Hello?” He hadn’t been receiving too many calls lately. Sherlock, Mycroft, and Lestrade knew when to leave well enough alone. His colleagues were no longer his colleagues, and his new friends underground generally had more efficient, less traceable ways of getting into contact with him.
“John! How are you?”
“Harry - ! Harry, I’m fine.” He straightened up, surprised to hear her voice. “Yeah, I’m at work, so I haven’t got too long, but … how’s it with you?”
“Oh, good, good.”
There was something in her tone that was off. It wasn’t surprising. Harry didn’t usually call unless there was something wrong. He loved her, but she wasn’t the most faithful sister. “That was… very convincing. Want to try that one again?”
“It’s nothing, it’s just – this guy at work. He’s being kind of a dick.”
“Oh, it’s a guy at work. Haven’t heard that from you in a long time,” he joked. It failed to get a laugh out of his sister.
“He’s decided he’s got the hots for me. Won’t take no for an answer.”
“Did you tell him he’s got the wrong chromosomes?”
“Yeah! The whole office knows, anyway! He even knows I’m back with Clara again. Didn’t seem to give a shit. Said it was ‘sexier that way’ – and what the hell is that supposed to mean, huh?!”
“I don’t know. Unfortunately, I can’t speak for every man on the planet, especially of the species Homo sapiens dickus.”
There was a rush of static from the other end that must have been Harry sighing. “I know. I know. I’m sorry. It’s just so frustrating.”
“Has he actually done anything?”
“No. Just been acting like a fucking perv.”
“Alright… well, you keep an eye on him. Build your case against him, you know? Then you can nail him on sexual harassment in the workplace, right?”
“Right. Bust his ass. That’d be glorious.”
“And if he does try something, anything at all, you call me right away. You got it?”
“Got it, Captain John.”
“I’ve gotta go, but be careful, alright?”
“Right. See you, John.”
He snapped the phone shut and put it away, pulling on a new pair of gloves and turning back to the exam room.
“Where were we?”
Jim looked up. He was lying on his stomach on the exam table, leaning on his elbows so that he could bring his face down to the level of the miniature city he’d constructed out of the cotton-tipped swabs. “Something the matter?”
“Some prick’s hitting on my sister.”
“And that’s… bad.”
“Since she’s already got a girlfriend and she thinks the guy’s a slime, yes, that’s bad.”
Jim shrugged. “You could shoot him.”
“I’m not going to shoot him,” John replied calmly, pulling a fresh tongue depressor out of the bottle. “He hasn’t actually done anything. It’s not a crime to be a prick.”
“Doesn’t mean you can’t shoot him.”
John rolled his eyes. “Thanks for the input, Jim, but I’ll pass.”
“Suit yourself!” With that, he squinted down at the tiny swab city. He pulled one finger back and gave a flick, sending the first building tumbling into the second, and on down the line, until they were scattered in pieces everywhere. John sighed and returned his attention to his clipboard of checkpoints.
Jim bought him a new gun for his birthday. “Unregistered,” he’d said, “so nobody can ever trace it to you.” He’d even had a gunsmith add in some extra striation to the barrel just to mess with any possible ballistics analyses. Just in case. It was strangely touching. Jim had bought a new holster special for it. It was expensive leather, custom-tooled for maximum concealment. It rested just inside John’s waistline, a sharp weight that jutted reassuringly against his hip. You’re safe, it said. You can protect yourself. And, He cares whether you’re locked up for murder in the first degree. It was the thought that counted.
He’d actually started going out on some of the missions Jim or his men went out on, as a sort of pre-emptive service. If someone got hurt, he could do a lot more good if he was on the scene already than he would if he had to cart himself halfway across London before he could do anything. And if nobody got hurt, then there wasn’t any harm done. He could always pretend to be just another henchman, hulking by and ready to shoot. He was armed, after all, and he did know how to shoot. And though he generally didn’t approve of Jim bringing innocent passerby into the underground’s missions, like the Pool Incident, he found that his sympathy was waning for cheating husbands being castrated or twat politicians having child porn planted in their office. He actually ended up coaching two of the minions on where to cut on the body for maximum pain and minimum blood loss.
So it was with a shortened patience that he picked up another call from Harry.
“John - !” Her voice was thick with damp, and he could hear it waver even several miles away.
“Harry? What’s wrong? What happened?”
“It’s that prick, he …he looked up Clara’s number in the phonebook and started sending her lewd texts. And he grabbed my ass this morning!”
“He what?!”
“I know I’m overreacting, but I just-“
“You’re not overreacting!”
“I shouldn’t be making such a big fuss, I-“
“Let me see what I can do,” he said, and it came out before his brain could stop him.
Harry laughed, and John didn’t think he was imagining the bitter streak in it. “You! What can you do about it?”
John licked his lips. “I don’t know. Maybe I can talk to him or something. Shoot a message off to Scotland Yard.”
“I don’t think they usually bother with ass-grabbing cases.”
“I don’t know, Harry. I’ll try. I’m your brother, aren’t I?”
There was a pause on the other end. “Yeah,” she said, and it was softer this time.
“Okay. I can’t promise anything, but I’ll try.”
“Okay…”
“Night, Harry,” he finished, reluctantly hanging up. He tapped the phone against his lips for a few thoughtful minutes.
Who would have thought the bastard could scream so loud?
He and Jim had picked up the office dick, one oily-faced twat by the name of Paul Thompson, from his apartment. Turned out the man had as little taste in interior decorating as he had propriety. The place was strewn with empty pizza boxes left out on any available horizontal surface. There was a somewhat less-than-subtle hiding box for porn videos under the coffee table, and the only real attempt at sprucing up had been to pin up posters of retro movies. It was like Thompson had just stopped growing up in puberty and thrown in the towel.
All things considered, it hadn’t been too hard to get their hands on him. Jim had happily handed off control of the mission to John, as he was the one with a personal stake in it. So John had packed his med kit with, among other things, a few hypodermic needles and a bottle of phenobarbital. Jim had picked the locks, and they’d crept in to the apartment. Thompson was in the kitchen, microwaving a bag of popcorn, when he heard their footsteps. He turned around just in time for John to grab his arm and hold him still while he slipped a needle into his forearm. Thompson had started to say something, grabbing weakly for John, before he collapsed heavily on the linoleum floor.
It was easy.
Thompson woke up in the operating room of Jim’s underground. He was tied to a chair by white plastic cords, surrounded by pristine tile and steel instruments. John had pulled the plastic splash curtains shut. Jim was leaning against the counter, all casual charm and festering dark. John was still in his woolen jumper, the one Jim loved seeing him in so much because he said it made him look normal. Thompson blinked open his eyes blearily before jolting awake in shock.
“Where the hell am I?!”
“Welcome to the party, Paul,” Jim said, an off-kilter smirk growing on his lips.
“Oh my God. Who are you?” He suddenly seemed to notice John. “You’ve got to get me out of here!”
It wasn’t all that surprising that Thompson had fixed on John as the rock of sanity in the room, someone to count on. John didn’t really blame him for making the assumption. People always did.
That didn’t mean they were right.
“Sorry, mate, ‘Fraid you’re not going to go anywhere just yet.”
“W-what? What do you want with me? Is it money? I can give you money!”
John tilted his head with an expression of disbelief. “Really? Because I saw your flat, and that was not the flat of a man who can throw around ransom money.” He paused. “But it doesn’t really matter anyway, because that’s not why you’re here.”
Thompson licked his lips, hesitating before asking, “Why am I here?”
“You touched my sister, Paul. What kind of big brother would I be if I let you get away with that?” With that, he pulled on a pair of nitrile gloves, letting them snap at the wrist sharply.
Thompson began to scream.
“Oh, come on, now, have some self-respect, I haven’t even done anything to you.” Thompson stopped, staring in shock. John had heard men scream before, seen them writhing in pain on an emergency cot in the middle of the desert, heard them crying in grief or shouting in shock. But at least they’d actually had something to scream about. He hadn’t even touched Thompson.
Jim giggled. “Yet,” he added.
After a moment, John shrugged, tilting his head side to side until his neck cracked. “Well. True. Yet.”
Thompson whimpered, a weak and quavering sound that surprised John in how much it annoyed him. John ignored him, turning to the equipment tray Jim had helped him arrange. He selected a scalpel from one end, holding it up to peer at its edge. “You know,” he said conversationally, “a doctor’s best tool is a perfectly sharpened scalpel.” He plucked a hair from the side of his head, gently spreading it over the scalpel blade. It sliced into two, fluttering to the tile floor in pieces. He glanced back to Thompson. “They say that if it’s sharp enough, it doesn’t even hurt until after it cuts.”
As John began to step over towards Thompson’s chair, he began to sob.
It never ceased to amaze John how much blood was in the human body.
Still, the cleanup was always strangely easy compared to the sheer amount of mess that they’d spread over the operation room. The whole room was washed down with showerheads installed in the ceiling, then sanitized with a thin coat of bleach, running the last trails of swirling scarlet down the drains in the floor. Jim helped him heave the body into the incinerator, and they watched the temperature gauge slowly creep up until there was nothing but ashes.
Harry called the next week. “The creep moved to Sunderland!”
“Sorry, what?”
“The office perv, the one that thought grabbing my ass was a national sport? He moved to Sunderland! Wrote this snotty little note to the boss and everything. Apparently he’s got this great place with historic architecture. All the worst dicks get the best breaks, you know?”
“Yeah… sometimes it happens like that, though. But that means you don’t have to deal with him anymore, right?”
“Exactly! Fuck him, fuck Sunderland, fuck the whole lot! ‘S not like I’m ever planning to move there.”
“Well, congratulations, then. You’re a free woman.”
“I know! I’m – sorry, hold on a second, Clara’s on the other line.”
“It’s alright. You can call me back later.”
“Got it. See you, John!” She hung up, and he slid the phone away. He returned to his work with a smile, whistling as he did so.
Nobody ever came investigating after Thompson. John never expected them to. Jim was very good at making deaths look like accidents, at least, when he wasn’t trying to make a message out of them. He could go out on the town, go to the shop, even hang out at the parks, and not a single person looked at him like he was out of place.
There was a glorious sense of thrill it gave, knowing he’d gotten away with it and that not a soul suspected him. He didn’t know how he’d gotten along without it before.
He even grew to truly look forward to accompanying Jim on his various missions. He was reaching for his kit almost before Jim could ask. And after seeing the handiwork he was capable of on Thompson, Jim always asked. Though he wasn’t always necessary, it was very interesting, and at points, he was the most useful man on the team. It was nice, being needed again.
The injuries on the job were almost always the henchmen, as they were doing the heavy lifting. It was rare for Jim to actually be hurt. Rare, but not impossible. It was strange, though, to see Jim wounded. It always felt like he was immortal in some ways, always running everywhere with endless energy, that genius that sometimes lapsed into the fringes of lunacy before circling back out again, and John always thought that it was a bit like breaking the natural laws of science to make him bleed.
Still, that made it all the more religious to heal him. John leaned over Jim in the underground medical wing. He had been shot in a surprising altercation; the victim had been cornered, and shooting Jim was really nothing more than a forced suicide, as he’d been gunned down immediately where he stood. They hadn’t seen it coming.
Now Jim was perched on a paper-covered table, torn shirt in the bin nearby, grimacing as John cleaned out the wound. “Ow, ow, right there,” he hissed.
“Sorry – there’s only so much topical anesthetics can do…” John couldn’t help but grimace in sympathy. “At least it was only a graze. I’d have to go digging around for a bullet otherwise, and that would be worse.”
“Fair enough…”
“Just hold still a bit more…” He swabbed a bit of antiseptic over the graze, making Jim draw in a sharp breath at the sudden burn. “Sorry, sorry. Better to hurt now than be infected later.”
“Ever practical, Doc.”
“That’s me,” John said with a smile, “practical.” Jim snorted as if they had shared an inside joke. John smiled a little wider and threaded a slender needle. “Right, this might sting a bit.” He slid it into the skin at the edge of the wound, deftly sewing it up in tiny, neat lines. A knot and a snip at the other end, and it was over. He patted a bandage down over it. “There! All done.”
Jim flexed his arm gently, experimentally. “Good as new. Almost.”
John nodded. “Almost. Just be careful with it for a while. I’ll want to see it once a week until I take the stitches out.”
“Your wish is my command,” he grinned, sitting up a little. He eyed John, all long gazes and eyelash. John belatedly realized that his hand was still on Jim’s arm where he had bandaged it. He supposed he ought to move it, but his hand didn’t seem to be going anywhere of its own accord. When was it that his mouth had gone dry? Jim smirked at him, looking for all the world like he could tell somehow. “You know, Doc, I always had a thing for tongue depressors.”
And before he could even begin to think about what that strange declaration meant, Jim was putting his hands in John’s jumper and pulling him down into a kiss. John started to pull away instinctively, because this was his boss, and that was an entirely new level of wrong to be adding into the equation of greyscale that was his life, but then, this was Jim, and rules didn’t really apply to him, did they? That wasn’t even to mention the fact that Jim was apparently an excellent kisser, doing things with his tongue that were incredibly distracting, and was that – oh, God, that was his teeth biting John’s lip, that had always been his weakness.
With a groan that was muffled against Jim’s lips, he gave up the attempt and kissed back. It was like throwing black powder on a flame, already burning bright but suddenly exploding with heat. There were hands everywhere, up his jumper, down his jeans, and he found he was returning the gesture by raking his hands through Jim’s hair and tracing the contours of his bare chest down to his waist.
Jim managed to fight the jumper off of him by some unholy miracle, and then he was tugging him down onto the clinic table. John allowed him, even giving a hand by settling down onto the cool plastic beside him, the chill biting into his skin a lurid contrast to the heat of Jim’s fingers. Jim was working at the buttons of his jeans, and that was moving rather fast altogether. John might have protested except then Jim kissed at John’s neck before opening his mouth against his clavicle, teeth scraping raw against his skin, and John dragged in a gasp of air. He found himself breathless as Jim licked a line of fire straight down his chest, swirling around his nipples and skipping along his stomach. His back arched involuntarily and he pulled hard on a handful of Jim’s short hair, the other hand desperately shoving down at Jim’s slacks. There was no going back after that, but John was disinclined to care at all.
When he finally regained his breath, they were lying tangled on the examination table, salty with drying sweat and damp hair. He rolled his head over slowly to look at Jim, who was staring at him with the sort of calm obsession that John had come to associate solely with his personal brand of insanity.
“Where did this sudden revelation come from? Not that I’m protesting, mind, but that was a bit of a surprise.”
Jim reached across him, his index and middle fingers delicately tracing the slender lines in John’s forehead. Jim watched his own fingers move as he replied, “It’s not sudden at all.”
“… Pardon?”
Jim glanced over briefly and smiled, a flash of bright like quicksilver. “Not sudden at all. I’ve been after you from the start. One big evil mastermind conspiracy. You know I like conspiracies.”
His forehead crinkled in thought, making Jim’s fingers tilt, and Jim smirked a little in response. Jim was the only man John knew who could smirk warmly. “You’ve been after me from the start.”
“Of course. And I always get what I want.”
John made a vague humming noise, and Jim’s arm thrummed with the vibration where it rested on his chest. It felt like pleasure.
Every time after that, it only became more natural. He could count the tiny freckles on Jim’s back the way that Jim could draw the scars on his skin. He knew the taste of Jim’s skin, salt and blood and cinnamon, sharp like a drug on his tongue. They wore each other inside and out, and it was only with Jim that John realized why the Bible used ‘to know’ sexually. He knew Jim, knew every single inch of him, pale and taut and careless laughter, and he touched what he knew and he knew what he touched and every inch of it touched back.
He should have joined an underground crime ring years ago.
It felt like he was walking around with sunlight trapped under his skin, warm and bubbling and ready to burst out at any moment. He was happy prescribing painkillers to the henchmen. He was happy watching Jim orchestrate an assassination from a computer screen. He was even happy when he had to clean up the clinic wing after messy jobs.
He was somewhat less happy when he was jumped in an alley five weeks later.
It was funny; after working for the crime lord of London for so long, he’d lost what little sense of fear of the city that he’d had. After all, everything that went bump in the night in the city was working for his boyfriend.
Oddly enough, the guys who clocked him didn’t seem to agree. John fought back, of course, he was not about to let anyone take the better of him without a struggle. He punched the first one in the nose, feeling the slender bones snap like tiny twigs beneath his knuckles. The thug reeled back, roaring in pain as his nose began to bleed. It gave him just enough time to draw his gun. A second went diving after him when they saw that he was armed, and he shot that one dead in the chest without hesitation. He fell to the concrete with only a few small burbles before expiring.
Unfortunately, hand-to-hand combat skills and an excellent gun only went so far when one was seriously outnumbered. The third managed to get another blow in on him, striking at his knees with a painful crack that had John stumbling for a moment. The stumble made his shot go wide, hitting the man in the arm rather than the chest. His bellow of anger brought the others in closer. John got a few more shots off, but then one of them smacked him on his injured shoulder, and the shock went speeding through his bones. In his moment of stunned pain, they took the opportunity to slam his head against the brick wall.
John could hear the sickening crack of his own skull as he hit, sliding slightly from his own dead weight before they dragged him back. There was furious shouting all around him, but his ears were ringing too loudly for him to make it out. He was tossed unceremoniously against a pile of boxes as they threw his gun down the alley into the dark. Then there were hands in his pockets, shoveling around greedily, and one of them was examining his wallet.
He stared in slack disbelief. This was all about a robbery? They went to that much trouble? It all seemed so ridiculous.
He had just opened his mouth to protest when one of them turned and sneered, bringing down the butt of his gun onto John’s already tender head. Everything went black.
He woke up what felt like an instant later with a pounding headache in the medical wing. Forcing his eyes to pry themselves open, he immediately regretted it when the onslaught of harsh fluorescent light made him feel like there was a giant metal spike being hammered into his head every time his heart beat. He grimaced, closing them again tightly until his eyelids wrinkled.
A shadow passed over him briefly when a tall henchman, Peterson, was it, leaned over him. He lifted his wrist to talk into it, a status update, before turning down the lights. John relaxed a little, relieved. A few short minutes later, Jim appeared, brought hurrying over from the wakeup alert.
“How…” John paused to lick his lips, hating how gravely his voice sounded, “how long?”
“Not too long. Just over an hour since we found you.”
And though his thoughts were still a little fuzzy, that didn’t make any sense. He’d been lying unconscious in some alley in the middle of London. It would have taken magic to find him when nobody would have even known he was gone. “How?”
“I put a GPS tracker in your shoes months ago,” he said, as if it were the most normal thing in the world.
“…Right.” That made more sense. “GPS.” Jim had found him because he was a paranoid and somewhat creepy crime lord. That was alright, then.
The thought struck him that if he ever broke up with Jim, the man would probably have him killed. At the very least. And if he’d been walking around without a clue about a GPS tracker in his shoes for months, then he didn’t stand a chance of ever outrunning or hiding from Jim.
“Sick people eat soup, don’t they? Soup and ice cream.” Jim turned to the minion with the wrist-bug. “Get soup and ice cream.” He paused to clarify, “Not together. Soup, full stop, and ice cream, full stop,” because apparently that was necessary to specify. Wrist-Bug nodded and disappeared out the door. Jim returned his attention to John, smiling broadly in what was probably his best attempt at helpful.
John cut him off at the pass. “Do you know who did this?”
The smile dropped off of Jim’s face like a gunshot. It left behind nothing but ice, a hard-chipped stare, and an anger that burned cold. “Yes.” John had never seen him look so angry. Even when he was facing off with Sherlock, he’d looked more entertained than anything else. A little frustrated, but mostly just excited. John was suddenly glad that Jim had never had any cause to be angry with him. You took what’s mine, his face said, and I will cut it out of you.
“The attackers were petty thieves. Nothing to waste too much time on,” and John heard, basic headshots, efficient kills. “But they were told to go after you by someone else. We got to you in the alley before he came to pick you up. Minor gang chief, small fry. I had tolerated his presence in London.” The until now was implied.
“Right… Well, I’m alive, that’s what counts, right?”
Jim opened his mouth to reply, but Wrist-Bug opened the door with a tray that had a bowl of piping soup and a glass of ice cream. By the time John had allowed him to arrange the tray over his lap, Jim was gone. He sighed with resignation and ate.
He didn’t eat everything; the aching in his skull was something of a buzzkill for his appetite. But at least it put food in his stomach so that his body could start healing itself. After he set aside the remains of his tray, he found himself drifting off again.
Beyond that, he couldn’t be sure of how much time passed. He woke up periodically in pain, only to be so exhausted that he would fall asleep again within minutes. He could have been in the clinic bed for as long as a week, or as little as an hour, and it wouldn’t have made a bit of difference. It was helping, though. He felt a little stronger every time he drifted back into the fluorescent lights.
He woke up again to hear the door of the wing close loudly. Jim strode forward, triumphantly dropping a large black bin bag on his cot. He stared at it, looked to Jim, then back to the bag.
It sort of smelled.
“What… is that?”
“No, no, no, what kind of surprise would it be if I just told you? Come on, Doc, you have to play it right! Open it!”
He could feel the corners of his mouth twitching up in the hint of a smile. Alright, then. If that was the way they were going to do things. He pulled himself up into a sitting position, then grabbed a handful of plastic and tugged it over to him. Something in the bag made a strange, sticky-slick noise as he dragged it over the humps of his blanket.
He glanced up to Jim, who nodded at him eagerly and motioned at the bag, before he untied the hefty knot at the bag’s neck. As soon as it was open, the smell clarified itself into the copper-sweet odor of fresh violence. The sides of the bag slid down, revealing the head of a man. The small fry gang leader. He had been thin, all angles and bone, an upsetting shade of natural blonde, with mean eyebrows.
At least, he had been before his head had been cut off. Now he was frozen in a look of abject horror, eyes rolled back in half-closed lids. There were specks of blood across his face, spatters of it in his hair, matting down bits of it in ugly tangles. His neck had been sawn off harshly, an uneven cut that went right between his fourth and fifth cervical vertebrae. Chunks of skin and muscle dangled in tiny threads. Between his medical studies and his criminal experience, it was not difficult for John to see that the sawing had been done while the man was still alive. At least, he was alive for the first of it.
“You brought me the… decapitated head of my attacker. … How sweet.”
And the part that probably should have horrified John more was that it actually was. Jim was beaming at him, and there was a freshly chopped head in his lap, and John was… touched. It was like a cat that brought back a dead mouse to its master. Look how much I love you. I brought you this horribly maimed corpse to show you. Aren’t you pleased? It was some bizarre sort of protection, a gift of the most gruesome death of the man who had dared to touch Jim Moriarty’s John.
He was getting a lump in his throat.
“You like it! I knew you’d like it.”
“Yeah… yeah, I like it. C’mere.” He grabbed hold of Jim’s wrist, pulling him down for a tender kiss.
After that, the message seemed to get out among the criminal underworld that John was untouchable.
It was a liberating feeling, knowing that his boyfriend would slaughter anyone who dared to lay a hand on him. It could have felt oppressive, but it didn’t. When the girl at the shop flirted at him over his celery, he thought, If I told Jim, I could have you skinned for that. And he didn’t, of course, because she was generally pleasant and she gave him 15% off of all of his produce because she liked his smile, and John didn’t want to go around getting shop girls skinned when they gave him discounts. But it was nice to know that the option was there.
That didn’t mean that there wasn’t trouble, of course. There were always crimes to commit, new dashing and daring feats of genius that would have Scotland Yard puzzling over it for months before resigning it to the bin of cold cases. Jim had upstart criminals to squash when they got in his way, and John had people to sew up and, on occasion, cut open.
But things could never be too dull for too long when Sherlock Holmes was in town.
It was amazing seeing their rivalry from the other side. When he had been with Sherlock, he had always known that Jim was one step ahead of Sherlock, a constant game of hide and go seek when Jim would switch hiding places every time Sherlock checked a room. But now that he was with Jim, it was incredible the sheer mass of crimes that he got away with completely under Sherlock’s nose. Of course, if there was anyone with a single hope of catching him in the entire country, it was Sherlock, but that didn’t mean he always did. Sherlock was a genius, of course, but he was nearly incapable of proper social contact, which meant that he always worked alone – especially now that John was gone. He was frustrated enough by the police that he went flying off on his own missions, never taking advantage of their resources.
Jim on the other hand, was also a genius. But Jim was a criminal mastermind, so while he was very probably incapable of proper social contact with normal people, he was also very good at pretending to be normal when Sherlock didn’t bother. He was disgustingly wealthy, and while Sherlock never used the funds available to him, Jim wasn’t afraid to. He had contacts everywhere, a veritable net of criminals, rogues, and thieves that all reported back to him because he cracked the whip.
In fact, it was almost unfair. Jim was a genius who commanded an entire army that marched beneath the very streets of London. Sherlock was a genius who fought his battles alone. It was no wonder that Jim had always seemed a step ahead.
Which was why it gave Jim such a perfect delight whenever Sherlock did manage to get a hold on a thread of crime he was responsible for. Sherlock was a lone wolf, but when he did find that thread, he would pull and pull until the entire thing was unraveled around him. And Sherlock had been hunting down the man behind the cocaine ring for ages now. It was past time for him to make a breakthrough.
And a breakthrough he did.
They weren’t sure how he did it, but Sherlock had finally laid his hands on one of Jim’s men. Not one of the crazies that Jim hired to be the face of the crime, like that old sod Jeff the cabbie, but one of Jim’s actual men, a young man that John privately referred to as Sergeant Clack in his head for the habit the man had of clacking his heels together to signify acceptance of Jim’s orders. They had all been trained to avoid interrogation and capture, of course, but mistakes sometimes happened. Clack fought him, and he fought him hard. They traded blows for some time, and when Clack finally escaped, it was with a cracked mandible, three crushed fingers, and an assortment of rainbow bruises. He’d given back hell, though, and left Sherlock with a black eye, a clump of bloodied, torn out hair, a pair of snapped ribs, and several greenstick fractures in his left arm.
Clack hadn’t discovered until after he reported back to Jim in woozy pain that Sherlock had slipped a note into his pocket before he’d slipped out the fire escape.
We both know you’re behind this. Why not quit the boring cat-and-mouse game and up the ante? -SH
Jim and John had read over it together, trading looks that were as eloquent as entire paragraphs. Three hours later, Sherlock received a photo text from an untraceable number. It showed the dusty floor of an abandoned warehouse, lit dimly through tears on the black plastic over the windows. Jim had felt that a classically villainous setting was most appropriate. On the floor was a simple spraypainted sign of ’0200.’ The message was clear. The showdown would begin at two o’clock in the morning.
When they arrived in the warehouse at such an early hour, the block was nearly pitch-black. Jim switched on the ancient lighting system, and a series of pot bulbs slowly flickered to life, stuttering and humming with effort. They cast pools of aged yellow on the cement floor. Jim set down a large metal suitcase on top of the spraypainted note, then settled in to wait.
He didn’t have to wait long. Sherlock strode in, confident as ever, coat billowing behind him as if he could make up for his lack of backup by sheer ego alone. He approached Jim, stopping a safe distance away, leaving the silver suitcase halfway between them.
“Finally surfacing again, are we, Moriarty?”
Jim laughed. “I never could resist an invitation to come out and play!”
“How lucky for me.” Sherlock cast him a thin look. He knew as well as Jim did that he would never have agreed to a meeting unless he had something planned. “What’s the game?”
“My new favorite!” He drew out the ‘a’ in ‘favorite,’ widening his eyes for emphasis. “But I only came up with half of this one. You see, I’ve decided that it’s time to… what’s the phrase… ‘settle down,’” he finished, supplying copious air quotes. “And this glorious game is partly my brainchild, but partly my new companion’s. I think you should meet him. Thank him in person. After all, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure! Come on out, Doc!”
John stepped out from behind one of the giant, dusty mixing vats, emerging into the light. He could hear a sharp breath from Sherlock.
“Weren’t expecting that one, were you?” There was something delicious about actually surprising the great Sherlock Holmes. “Never thought I’d amount to much of anything.”
Sherlock’s shock was swiftly wiped off of his face, replaced by a disdainful sneer. “And I see that you haven’t. You’ve actually managed to devolve since I last saw you. Really, John, petty crime?”
“Oh, it’s hardly petty, Sherlock,” he said, and shared a bit of a smile with Jim.
“Nnnno, yes, I can see that now… the small bloodstain on your collar gives that away quite nicely.”
John looked down, then grimaced, tugging his jumper out so that he could see the spot. “Damn! This was my favorite jumper.”
“Was that from Paul?” Jim asked, rocking slowly between his heels and the balls of his feet.
“Mm. Thought I got all of it out in the wash. Oh, well. I’ve got another few dozen where that came from.” He released the handful of woolen jumper and returned his attention to Sherlock. “Point is, we’ve got something you want. But it might be a bit of a challenge.”
Jim clapped his hands. “The drop locations! All the drop locations for the next three shipments of poisoned cocaine are in that suitcase. If you can get to them.”
John nodded to the keypad that was wired to the top of the suitcase. It bore a simple input bar of letters below a red blinking screen. “I know how much you like puzzles, after all. I came up with a password to get into it. I’ll even give you a few hints. It’s in English, it’s all letters, and it’s not a proper noun. After I push this button,” he held up a small remote with a button to prove to Sherlock that it was not an empty threat, “you have three minutes to solve it and get the papers or the bomb in the suitcase goes off.”
“Three minutes – that’s no time at all!”
“You’re the genius,” John replied flatly. “Or you could always give up.” The last time Sherlock had played a game like this, John had been there to save him. No more. “You see, the great thing about this is that I’m not actually killing you. You’ve got more than enough time to walk away before it goes off. You’ll only die if you decide to take the bet and if you lose.” He paused, leveling a serious look at Sherlock. “So I guess what it comes down to is whether you think I’m smart enough to outsmart you.”
There was a moment of silence.
“Very well. I accept your challenge.”
“As you like. Goodbye, Sherlock.” He pressed the button, and Sherlock dove onto the suitcase to begin entering words. Jim reached out, slinging an arm around his shoulders, and they strolled out of the warehouse leisurely.
They got almost a block away when the blast went off. The warehouse erupted in fire and sound, the windows shattering from the inside out in a cloud of sparkling sharp. Flames burst out of every crevice, flying out horizontally before licking up the sides of the building, staining the brick black as death. Broken twists of metal and brick tumbled across the sidewalk, finally slowing to a stop where they pulsed with heat.
Neither of them flinched. John didn’t look back to see if Sherlock had gotten out before the explosion.
“What did you set the password to?” Jim asked with a curious cock of the eyebrow.
“The one word Sherlock would never think of.”
“And that is…?”
“Heliocentric.”
The answering laugh from Jim was all that John needed to hear.
fin