Work Text:
prologue: subdural hæmatoma
At age 8, James Moriarty puts his mother in a coma. It isn’t intentional, per se, and it certainly isn’t an overtly malicious act. It just… happens.
Evelyn has grown frustrated with Jim’s persistent silence (he always had been an exceptionally withdrawn boy) and he with her dull, stubborn optimism.
One utterly nondescript day, Evelyn is looking for Jim again. She searches through the Moriarty mansion and finally finds him in plain sight, sitting at the top of the grand staircase. He is looking contemplatively at a deep red pane in the house’s stained glass windows. His small hand is outstretched; fingers and palm light-stained the deep cherry colour.
“James,” Evelyn says softly, fondly, and the boy’s head swivels towards the sound. She climbs the staircase and stops a few steps below Jim. “It’s time for tea.”
Jim blinks and impassively returns his gaze to his light-mottled hand, stretching his fingers in the warmth of the illuminated red. “James, come along,” Evelyn insists more firmly, pulling at his arm lightly. The boy’s eyes flick towards the contact and then away, back to his fingers, lazily curling and uncurling in the dusky glow. “James, I mean it,” Evelyn is fed up with Jim’s endless blank silence. She pulls firmly at Jim’s arm, almost enough to displace him from the stair.
“My name is not James,” He speaks at last, voice soft and lilting. “That’s father’s name.” As he says the word father, he pulls his arm away in a sharp gesture that is as much a surprise to him as it is to his mother. He is usually such a languid, apathetic thing, his movements passive and smooth. This brash, quick movement catches Evelyn completely off guard, and she loses her balance, the knife-sharp stiletto heel of her shoe hanging off of the step and encountering nothing but air.
She falls like she’s drowning, hair rushing forward and surrounding her face like tendrils suspended in water, arms thrown out and legs searching for a nonexistent foothold. She tumbles sharply backwards and lets out a cry as she connects with the hard edges of the stairs, going limp before she reaches the bottom of the staircase.
Jim descends the stairs hesitantly, slowly, lightly running the palm of his hand along the banister as he does so. Evelyn lies in odd angles at the foot of the stairs, limbs and hair tangled and contorted. Jim doesn’t so much as whisper. He steps down from the last stair and edges forward towards where her slack, parted lips are visible through the errant ropes of her hair.
Blood spills slowly across the marble floor, blooming crimson from one of Evelyn’s nostrils into a glassy, misshapen stain.
Jim bends low and dips the tip of one index finger into the smooth surface of the blood pool. He lifts the finger and regards it calmly. The tip is slicked with the same color as the stained-glass light.
i. cyanosis
It begins on the schoolyard when they are both still malleable, still freshly hatched, and Sherlock’s eyes are just dilating into the acute focus he will carry with him for the rest of his life.
It is a biting winter day when thirteen-year-old Jim, with a spectacular welt on one cheek from when he had displeased his father, sees Sherlock in London. Jim is never in London; this day is unusual in that he needs to be fitted for a prep school uniform and he’s shoved into the back seat of his father’s car and driven to the tailor’s by Hollingsworth, the manservant (and if that doesn’t give young, pale Jim a clenching hot rage in the pit of his stomach; not worthy enough for his father’s time, yet again). The car is stopped at a busy intersection and Jim doesn’t care one ounce about its cross streets, only that it’s busy and that busier intersections have a higher possibility of turning interestingly bloody, and he sees him.
Sherlock is walking briskly down the busy sidewalk and Jim is captivated. He’s thought a few girls were worth second looks, and even (to his internal delight at how furious his father would be if he knew) a few boys, but nothing has ever gripped him like this before. His chest tightens and a tingling spreads its way through him, spilling outward from underneath his ribcage, flickering all the way out to his fingers and kneecaps. Sherlock, even in his ungainly youth, is breathtaking. He isn’t conventionally attractive, but then, Jim had never really cared for conventionality, even as a very young boy. He’s gangly and his hair is a mess of curls and his eyes blaze blue with intelligence and Jim has never been so blood-singing attracted to anyone before. He has always been ahead of the curve and he knocks adolescent infatuation off the table before it ever really becomes a possibility; how absurd. He is terrifyingly, chemically drawn to this boy because he is not dull. Jim can see it in the distressed, disgusted furrow of his brow, in his brisk gait, in the sharp, acute power of his gaze.
It doesn’t take him long to learn Sherlock’s name.
He weighs the name in his mouth like marbles, rolls it on his tongue, savours it like candy, like blood.
Then, he learns Carl Powers’ name.
He learns Carl Powers’ name with the force of a kick to the stomach, with the harsh softness of a laugh above him while on his knees in a bathroom stall, with the acidity of the taste clogging his throat, under his tongue.
(But he learns to take a slap with the best of them, learns to love the slight jarring of teeth uncovered by a really good punch, learns to swallow mouthfuls of blood and come up grinning; he doesn’t know it yet, but this will prove invaluable in the face of Mycroft Holmes’ interrogation, it will allow him to withstand, to persevere until they offer him the only thing he wants: Sherlock.)
The day he isn’t prepared for, however, is the day he is forced to lie back and think of England, or rather close his eyes as his cheek and chest are pressed into cold tile; a medicinal chill seeps into his skin that leaches the breath from his lungs, leaves his hands porcelain-cold and shaking. The acrid, piercing smell of bleach sears his lips (pressed against the tile, chemical contusions blooming), his nose, his lungs, his tear ducts, burning the very heart out of him. He sobs and shakes against the white tile and the weight above him presses him down against the smooth, white, bleach-burning expanse, eases up, presses down, eases up, sinks in deeper, and Jim feels the hurt within him like a heartbeat. His eyes sting and clench shut, and he hears something that sounds like deliverance.
It’s the sound of the bathroom door opening. Carl Powers and his stupid fucking trainers practically leap off of Jim where he lies shuddering on the floor. The person who opened the door walks into the adjacent stall and begins his business, and Carl chooses that moment to run, but not without taking one last look down at Jim and laughing almost inaudibly.
And Jim sees red.
(a deep cherry red, the flavor of stained glass)
He peels himself off the cold, burning floor despite his body’s state of medical-grade shock and limps out of the disabled stall and over to the sink. The toilet flushes in his unwitting saviour’s stall and Jim holds his breath.
Sherlock Holmes steps out, tucking his shirt in, icy-sweet gaze fixed on the floor and Jim bolts, heartbeat pounding I owe you my life, I owe you, I O U.
---
He laughed at me.
So I stopped him laughing.
---
When they haul Carl’s body out of the pool, his lips are blue, chalky blue, icy like Sherlock’s eyes, and Jim’s hands clench around the bag with Carl’s shoes in it and his heart is beating a precise marching tempo of 120 beats per minute iouiouiouiou.
ii. asphyxia
Jim has spent his entire young life learning what he hates; when he first becomes an adult, moves away with the money he’s been embezzling from his father since primary school, he decides to learn what he likes.
He likes dilated pupils, dissecting animals, biting and sucking at arteries on long, thin pale necks taut with pleasure, the darkest chocolate money can buy, bullet cartridges, fine fabrics, and the Bee Gees.
He does not like people.
He likes them on an animal level, an anatomical level, he likes certain isolated parts of them, he likes holding human hearts heavy in his hands, but he does not like any one whole person.
That is, except for Sherlock Holmes.
Jim is still going by Jim and he has kept Carl Fucking Powers’ shoes in a lockbox under his bed all this time. The proximity is viscerally thrilling as Sherlock was, of course, the only person who ever noticed something was amiss about the incident. By this point, Jim has assumed Murphy as a surname: a positively ironic nod to his accent.
Sherlock is, of course, gloriously obtuse and almost obscenely brilliant, and it isn’t very hard to keep a surface eye on him at Cambridge. It will have to do for now. Jim wants to peel him apart, dissect him, lick his way up every vein and artery in his neck, his stark forearms, bite at the protruding swell of his median antibrachial vein, but he waits. It will come with time.
You have to build an elaborate mousetrap to catch a clever mouse.
As Sherlock falls in harsh, bloody love with his 7% solution, Jim craves Sherlock like Sherlock craves the rush.
Jim doesn’t like people, ordinary, dull creatures, like the ones he hires to threaten politicians, to extort secrets from underneath fingernails and within veins swollen with truth serum, but he likes Sherlock, he more than likes Sherlock, he needs him because in a world of dry homogeny, he has found his oasis.
Jim is painstakingly building an empire out of a spider’s web, playing with the ordinary people, establishing his connections and killing whomever he needs to (but not by his own hands, how gauche, especially because he has taken somewhat of a liking to Vivienne Westwood). He is clawing his way to the top, amassing a stockpile of weapons and corpses and a whole black leather book full of anyone and everyone he could ever possibly want to bribe. It is a game, a delicious game, more fun than Who Killed the Boy in the Swimming Pool, and the underworld opens for him, fetid and sweet, and clients with razor-sharp nails and money to burn claw for his attention.
Please, Jim, fix it for me?
And Jim is only too happy to oblige.
Sherlock stumbles upon the phrase consulting detective and Jim laughs, howls, and Jim has had business cards with the title consulting criminal embossed on them for months. Jim laughs until it peters out to a soft, cruel chuckle, barely echoing off the walls around him, and he smells bleach and feels his lips tingle and oh, he stops laughing.
I owe you.
And it hits him. Not like a kick to the stomach, or bruised knees, but like the dizzying, heady smell of formaldehyde, the crisp snap of a fracture.
He must repay Sherlock.
iii. subclavian arteries
There, on the mortuary’s inexhaustibly bleak rooftop, in the last desperate shocks and shudders of the Final Problem, Jim cannot resist one last look. The moment he hears goodbye John, he rises from his open-mouthed, glassy-eyed sprawl in a pool of theatrical blood-synthetic and scrambles haphazardly to the very edge of the rooftop, palms slapping sharply against the concrete. He leans over dangerously, almost full-tilt, and sees the burnt crimson flowering slick from Sherlock’s “head wound.” One of the trauma nurses hears bravo, brava and machine-gun applause echoing against the buildings surrounding Bart’s. She lifts her head to try to identify the source of the cry as though in silent prayer.
Jim raises his face to the bleak sunlight and smiles, begins to laugh, and the laughing turns violent, into wracking, harsh sobs, he is overcome. He falls backward, landing next to the slick pool of synthetic blood, tears streaking their way down his cheeks. His fingertips hit the glassy puddle and his eyes snap open.
(red like a stained glass window
red like a subdural hæmatoma
red like a crisp apple
I
O
U)
It was never about the money, it was never about the infamy, the access, any of it. That was the spider’s web, the mousetrap.
It wasn’t even about bringing the great Sherlock Holmes to his knees, begging for mercy, bringing him down to Moriarty’s level, no. It was making sure that he fell so hard and so completely from any semblance of grace that finally, finally, he could begin to truly realize his potential.
Staying alive is so boring.
The solution to the Final Problem was not the fall from the mortuary rooftop. Not the money. Not the infamy. It was what came after it. Jim never wanted them both to die, he wanted them both to “die.”
He wanted to burn everything from Sherlock, to burn the heart out of him, to baptize him with bleach. He wanted that recognition, that spark, the simple knowing that Sherlock wasn’t one of the angels to blossom into the stomach-twisting fear that be didn’t belong on the side of the angels.
The only place left for Sherlock to turn, the only way he will want to turn, is to Moriarty’s side.
Three days, twenty two hours and sixteen minutes after Sherlock “died,” he is waiting for Jim on the rooftop at Bart’s, smoking a cigarette.
He waits four hours, smokes a full pack, draws his coat around him tightly and walks back to Molly’s apartment.
He wonders if Jim knows he’s staying with her.
What do you need? She had said, and Sherlock had said you. She obliged, letting him into her house, her schedule, her cats’ hygienic processes.
Once he started smoking, she told him to do so somewhere else if he felt like dying.
There is only one place where he feels like dying.
Sherlock waits on the rooftop every night for two weeks, once narrowly escaping being seen by a young, exhibitionist couple.
He studies every shadow, investigates every noise, begins to calculate the number of bricks in the entire building, and smokes. And smokes. And smokes.
And wants Jim to materialize from his exhales; he is ephemeral enough.
But he doesn’t.
By the second week, Sherlock has grown tired of making the trek on foot to Bart’s and decides to resign to the rooftop of 221b (much closer, John hasn’t been there for months, minimized chance of unexpected exposure, quite frankly just less of an all-around pain in the arse, particularly on chilly nights) for his nightly smoke.
“I was wondering how long it would take you,” Sherlock hears, and his lips involuntarily twitch up in a smile. He quickly slays it where it lies and turns around to see Jim, reclining in an Adirondack chair, wearing surprisingly informal, relaxed clothing.
Another chair is directly next to his, their arms mere inches apart, and Jim beckons coquettishly for Sherlock to sit down.
“Interesting,” Sherlock nods. “I would have thought Bart’s.”
Jim shrugs. He picks up a glass of (deep cherry stained glass blood-slick) wine and drinks deeply. He motions again for Sherlock to sit, easily, fluidly. Sherlock obliges hesitantly. “I knew it was just a matter of time.”
“Right,” And Jim is speaking like he has nothing to prove, as languidly as a man who has proved his mettle and is enjoying the spoils. “Have a glass of wine.”
Sherlock accepts the long-stemmed glass, taking a soft sip. Jim half-smiles plaintively, almost sweetly.
“This could go on forever, you know…” Jim trills, swirling his wine into a bloody tornado within the glass.
“Oh?” Sherlock’s throat is dry, he clears it. It is ineffective. He takes another sip of wine and Moriarty’s teeth bare ivory into a full smile.
“You and I. We could just keep trying to kill each other until one of us gets so reckless that we finally succeed, or…”
“Or?” Sherlock’s breathing is slightly laboured. He presses a hand to his slender chest.
“Something troubling you, sweetheart?” Jim asks, setting his slender-stemmed glass on the table on his other side.
“No,” Sherlock rasps, but his eyes give him away, wide and panicked. “Go on,” he clutches at his chest briefly, eyes flaring bright and hard with pain.
“Thank you. Or… we could stop this.” Jim looks at Sherlock through his spindly lashes.
“I don’t think…” Sherlock’s world roils and lurches; his stomach pangs. “…that stopping this is up to me… right now.”
“Quite the contrary.” Jim accentuates his words, drawing closer to Sherlock and laying a pale hand on his. “It’s completely within your control. All you’ve got to do is concentrate.” He skips his consonants like stones, landing on one hard C and spinning in a smooth arc till the next.
Sherlock remembers half-lit, blurry fragments of Shakespearean sonnets and the shade of red lipstick one of his university professors wore as she read them aloud, the words dripping forth, a font of alliteration, and Jim’s teeth are sinking a crescent into his own bottom lip and Sherlock lurches forward unsteadily and crushes their mouths together in a wrecked, loose kiss, spreading the bitter antidote beyond the confines of Jim’s lips.
The contact is slick and soft and almost at once Sherlock’s breathing slows and his stomach stops churning oceans. He decides to use this new strength to his advantage and he pulls Jim in by his worn, softened collar and slides their lips open to slot against each other’s.
Jim makes a hungry sound and pries Sherlock’s fingers from being curled around the stem of his wineglass. He bats the wineglass out of Sherlock’s hand; it makes a dull thud against the rooftop and spills a river of poisoned wine somewhere to the left of them. Jim abandons his chair in order to sit astride Sherlock’s legs and tangle his trigger-happy fingers in his curls. Their bone structures slot together and to Jim it feels electric, not repulsive, it feels like cutting a Y-incision, it feels like home, and Sherlock pulls Jim closer, reels him in by biting and pulling his bottom lip.
“I told you so,” Jim says against his lips, muted as a flower pressed between yellowed pages.
“Told me what?” Sherlock’s voice is deep, impossibly resonant, shot through with desire.
“I owed you a fall.” Jim kisses the corner of Sherlock’s mouth, feather-light.
“You gave me a fall,” Sherlock’s urgent tone has nothing to do with the odd, almost baiting language that Jim seems to be using to tempt him into an argument.
“Very good.” Jim’s fingertips tap out meaningless binary Bach against Sherlock’s occipital lobe. “Why?”
“To ruin me.” Sherlock states, simple and unabashedly.
“Oh? Explain.” Jim breathes into Sherlock’s neck, right above the I O U pulsing in his taut subclavian artery before pressing his lips to the skin there and tasting the salt.
“You wanted to win.” Sherlock’s fingers tense against Jim’s shoulder blades.
“Win what?” Jim lightly traces along Sherlock’s cordlike carotid with his incisors and a hint of tongue.
“The game.” Sherlock gasps. Jim sinks his teeth down angrily, hard, without warning, and Sherlock cries out, a guttural exclamation of surprise.
“Sherlock, there IS NO GAME!” Jim pulls back and spits loudly, they are almost nose-to-nose. “Now try again. What was I out to win?”
“I…”
“You don’t know.” Moriarty’s eyes are wide, he leans in as though to kiss Sherlock again, but he speaks against the corner of his mouth, eyes fluttering shut and eyelashes dusting against Sherlock’s cheekbone momentarily. “You really don’t know."
Sherlock’s cheeks flush a deep pink; Jim has never seen him like this before. It’s delicious.
“I wasn’t trying to win anything, Sherlock.” Jim runs a thumb over one of Sherlock’s cheekbones. His fingers return to their classical numerals lightly against Sherlock’s collarbone.
And it’s almost gracious, really, a sort of sick parody of kindness, that Jim lets Sherlock figure it out on his own. He is giving Sherlock that one last modicum of dignity, allowing Sherlock to feel that last genuine realization click into place.
“You were trying to solve the Final Problem.” Sherlock says softly. “Or rather, you called it the Final Problem. It was never mine.” He brings his eyes up to meet Jim’s boldly.
“Oh, really? Then what, pray tell, was the Final Problem?”
And it comes together like a crashing symphony. Jim can almost see it in the way Sherlock’s teeth scrape at his bottom lip, the way he begins to perspire, the way he can almost hear him arrive at the conclusion.
“You are me,” Jim had said on the mortuary rooftop, and yes. It was true. They were always meant to be that way. Always mean to spin on the same axis, to give over to that wrecked, burning craving. Jim had wiped away all of Sherlock’s connections, all of his reasons to doubt; Jim had burned his bridges for him. He had made it easier for Sherlock to just give in.
Sherlock wants, with sudden clarity, to watch the world burn with Jim because the world just isn’t worth saving. John Watson is. Mrs. Hudson is. Greg Lestrade is. But the world, and its ordinary people, isn’t.
“I know. You’re on the side of the angels.” Jim drawls, burying his face into the hollow between Sherlock’s neck and shoulder.
“I’m not so sure anymore,” Sherlock says quietly into his hair, and is that a tear Jim feels against his forehead?
“Come to bed with me.” Jim says. He pulls backwards, cupping Sherlock’s face in his hands, and he kisses his forehead. “Come on.”
Sherlock, for his sharp tongue and even more formidable mind, is out of his depth here. This feels like lungfuls of brackish water, this feels like the desperate pressure of a tennis ball against veins and arteries. You only get one chance at some things.
He lets himself be led into his old flat, and is surprised that his footsteps aren’t following Jim’s so much as falling into step beside them. Sherlock has never allowed his instincts to carry him this far before; they have always been the mortal enemies of the clear, level-headed logic that he dedicated his life to upholding. He is fighting every ounce of training, seeing every potential threat far too clearly, and he lets Jim lace their fingers together all the same.
Everything in the flat is covered in a terrifying, eerie film of dust. Stepping into 221b this way is almost like seeing a sepia-toned photograph of it; without life in a house, all the colors mute and fade, everything looks still and solemn as a graveyard. It’s painful for Sherlock to see everything so untouched but clouded over by dust and cobwebs, like scabs forming over fresh wounds. It almost seems to Sherlock that he could instantly resume life here, but it would be wrong, almost be like living in a mausoleum. He is the ghost that drove John out, he is the cause of this wretched stillness.
“This is what you would be leaving behind,” Jim tugs gently on Sherlock’s hand. “Dust, guilt, and a half-finished game of Cluedo. I don’t think the spiders would miss you too terribly.” He gives a quirky shrug, tensing the muscles in his neck, looking a little bit not remorseful at all.
“I’d be willing to bet that the only room that doesn’t feel like this is yours,” Jim says, and it hurts in Sherlock’s bones. He lets Jim lead him by crossed pinkies into his old room, with the Periodic Table of the Elements glaring disapprovingly from the closet door, he lets Jim push him down onto the bed, lets him bend down gently, lets Jim rest his forehead against his own far more pale one, lets him kiss and kiss and kiss.
Jim’s fingers pluck insistently at Sherlock’s shirt buttons, the motions bordering on ripping. Sherlock lets him unfasten it completely, his own usually clever fingers suddenly clumsy, shaking. Jim sucks at Sherlock’s neck while making fast work of his black leather belt. He grabs it by the buckle and pulls; the entire length of it slips from the belt loops whip-fast and cracks against the floor.
Sherlock is petrified. His muscles tense up involuntarily underneath Jim and his eyes flick around the room in a frenzied panic. He is reminded none too softly of how Jim strapped a bomb to John just to make Sherlock dance, has put the few people he cares about in danger, that these hands are the hands of a killer, and what’s to say that this wasn’t his plan all along?
Jim keeps worrying the skin of Sherlock’s neck, his earlobe, places a nip on his cheekbone as his hands work deftly at the button and zip on Sherlock’s trousers. He succeeds and Sherlock allows him, skin pulled taut in tension and fear, to remove them and his pants. Jim sits back as he does so, pulling his own shirt off, cotton stretching over his head. He discards his own trousers and pants to the side and ducks his head down to place a kiss on the pale, trembling skin of Sherlock’s stomach. He kisses his way up to Sherlock’s mouth with just an edge of teeth in each contact. They are pressed full flush against each other, and Sherlock’s body is shaking with what Jim thinks is want.
It’s not.
On kissing him deeply, slotting their tongues together, Jim tastes salt and pulls back abruptly.
“Sherlock? What’s wrong?” Jim says, in a close echo of the way he said what, what did I miss on the mortuary rooftop, too urgent to be anything but genuine.
And Sherlock can’t do anything but tremble, pressing his face sideways into the pillow.
And, oh. Jim understands. Jim knows this.
“I’m not going to hurt you, oh, I’m not going to hurt you, don’t you see, this is what I owe you.” Jim’s eyes are dark and sharp and he catches Sherlock’s gaze and won’t let go. He bends down until their noses are touching, both pairs of pupils are blown wide, and he kisses Sherlock tenderly. Jim cards his hands through Sherlock’s hair and holds him as best he can until the trembling subsides. “I’m not going to hurt you, this is what I wanted all along. I never wanted to destroy you, I wanted to save you.” Jim whispers into Sherlock’s ear, planting a kiss on its shell. Sherlock’s arms rise, seemingly almost of their own volition, and wrap tightly around Jim. Jim laughs, a low, wet sound, and feels Sherlock’s heartbeat stabilize beneath him.
I O U.
Steady. Earthen. Constant.
“I’m not going to make you do anything you’d be uncomfortable with,” Jim murmurs almost shyly and nuzzles his face into the crook of Sherlock’s neck, and it’s unbearably surreal, indescribable, intimate. Sherlock nods shakily and Jim seals their lips together again. This time, Sherlock responds readily, hands journeying the planes of Jim’s back and sides.
Jim raises himself up on all fours and crawls a few inches further up Sherlock’s body so that they are fully seated against each other. Jim rocks his hips down against Sherlock’s and he can feel Sherlock’s fingers tighten on his shoulders as he gains friction against him. His effort also earns him a stuttered gasp, one he is sure Sherlock did not mean to let slip.
Jim wants, oh, wants Sherlock to keep making delicious little noises like that; he reaches his hand between them and aligns both of their cocks together, stroking decisively and kissing Sherlock to swallow the broken beginnings of moans. He stops after a few moments of this languid contact and abruptly shifts backwards onto his knees, bends his head down and takes Sherlock as deep into his mouth as he can.
Sherlock can’t help the half-moan, half-sob that this tears forth from his mouth, and he reaches down with one hand almost reflexively, in open-mouthed pleasure, to tangle it into Jim’s hair. Jim allows it, looks up at Sherlock with eyes blown dark and cheeks hollow and obscene around his cock. He sucks hard and uses just enough teeth on the underside to send Sherlock reeling. Sherlock’s back arches off the bed and he clutches the sheets with one hand and Jim’s hair with the other.
Jim pulls off with a slick “pop” and climbs his way back up Sherlock’s body for a kiss. Sherlock bucks up against him, a slave to finding friction, and they grind, naked and almost teenage, for a heated moment.
It is Jim who finally ups the ante (I’m not going to hurt you), climbing on top of Sherlock and splaying his hands out on that pale chest. He sinks down slowly onto Sherlock, who moans low and whiskey-hot. Once Sherlock is in him, really in him, Jim lifts his hips up slightly and slides them back down. Sherlock moans loudly and his hands dig into Jim’s thighs reflexively.
This feels so fucking good for Jim, to finally be burned clean, to finally get what he wants. Nothing more, nothing less. He doesn’t feel guilt. He doesn’t feel suffocated. He doesn’t smell bleach. He can’t feel anything except Sherlock, and he takes and takes and takes.
And Sherlock gives.
Sherlock gives himself over, he gives away his ghosts, he gives everything he’s got and he’s free.
And later, when both of them are pliant and hazy, curled up together in dark blankets, Jim will ask are you coming with me?
And Sherlock will say yes.