Title: The Light of the Match
Summary: They are two equals, fighting a battle of minds and wit, so in a way it's hardly surprising with their dedication to outmanoeuvre each other using their brains that their bodies work in unison, on an instinct.
Disclaimer: Don't know, don't own, don't sue.
A/N: Written on a train ride to London on my cell phone in early December. I forgot about it for nearly a month but then I remembered it yesterday and finished it off. Just in time for Season 2!
Jim Moriarty was the light of a match. He was the flame that crept towards your fingers and singed your skin. He was the dancing energy hidden behind the enthrallment of a light that held you in rapture. If you let him get too close he'd burn you. There was a flare behind his eyes that illuminated insanity and immeasurable intelligence, a spark that threatened unthinkable things. He was that beautiful pain that blossomed before you realised you'd been caught. He was dangerous.
And Sherlock knew all this. He knew the risk, he knew the danger. He knew not to play with matches. But that draw, a moth to a flame, was stronger than any sense of self-preservation he had. If that thrill made him hurt, it was a just cause in his mind, an experiment on himself. I'm in control.
"But you're not," Moriarty would laugh, lilting and mocking, "and how does it feel to be acting like just another human being? Irrational and emotional and predictable."
Sherlock would deny these allegations, of course, with a raised eyebrow and cool tone, but how could he admit that when he thrived off fact and truth, the only person in the world who matched him, and challenged him with reason, could make him lie to himself?
He kept coming back, again and again, and each time he'd ask himself why. He wasn't going to disillusion himself with professions of hatred or revenge or curiosity. He knew he wasn't driven by his mind or the exploration into another's. He knew it was something more than that, that it was more instinctive and primal.
If he was honest with himself it was partly because he saw a likeness in Jim and the similarities brought out a natural need to associate himself with him, and partly because, as much as he disliked to say it, he could see what John meant when he talked about empathy and understanding. He'd never had someone in his life before who he could visualize being, except perhaps his brother, but the want wasn't there in that. Moriarty had an intriguing brain but that wasn't it either. The constant returning fell down to an indiscernible desire that he couldn't comprehend and if Moriarty could, which would kill him, he wasn't telling.
He sat on a bench, resting against the metal armrest, at the top of a hill in London, the sprawling city in a glow beneath them, lit up by a million lights. If Sherlock was inclined to use ridiculous comparisons he might have said it looked like they'd tied the sky to the earth, a universe of stars beneath their feet. As it was, he didn't say anything, for the company he held and because it was unnecessary, but he wondered when he'd begun to let dreaming thoughts like that enter his mind.
"Every one of those people, and they're nothing on us," his company murmured at the sight before them. Sherlock didn't reply and stared out into the city, fixing his eyes on the lives before him and not the person to his left. The chill of the breeze caught smoke that drifted past his face, touching his skin in a tempting way, and he wished to God he had ten nicotine patches right then. He also wished he could grab that cigarette straight out of Moriarty's hands and take a deep inhale, and judging by the soft chuckle he heard after he tensed slightly, Moriarty knew exactly what he was doing to him. After a few minutes Sherlock broke.
"Can you not smoke?"
"Why, scared I'll die and you'll be left all alone?" Moriarty replied, lifting the smouldering cigarette to his lips. "Or has John's worry been rubbing off on you, are you trying to save your own lungs from such a disgusting habit?"
"We don't talk about John," Sherlock frowned slightly. It was an unspoken rule. Then again, the rules in this new twisted game they were playing changed so frequently it was hardly possible to say there were any at all. With that thought he broke the rule himself. "He hates you, you know. For all those people you hurt. For me."
Moriarty smirked into the smoke, his eyes amused.
"Ah, Johnny the saint. Saint John. Always so sympathetic. Always so vengeful for justice. I'm not surprised at all. He has this weak sense of pride and compassion that will always be his downfall. Other people destroy you."
"You really have a positive outlook on life, don't you?"
"Nobody else does you any good. Not when you're above everyone else."
"You've got a superiority complex."
Moriarty laughed again but there was no humour in his voice. He tilted his head to look at Sherlock, tapping the fingers of his free hand on the bench.
"There's a fine line between love and hate."
Sherlock felt his stomach muscles clench involuntarily as he finally turned to look at Moriarty and took in the gaze he set upon him, intense and calculating. He looked genuinely curious as to how Sherlock would reply, and curiosity was not a common factor in whatever this thing between them was, that curiosity made him suspicious.
"I don't hate you," he stated.
There was an almost imperceptible flicker in Moriarty's face that Sherlock wouldn't have seen if he hadn't been looking for it.
"You don't love me either. You are that line," Moriarty drew out the words for impact and it worked. As much as he tried, Sherlock couldn't anticipate the next sentence, or even the next word, and it held him to them like a hook. "A tightrope that is so easy to fall and sway off of."
Sherlock arched an eyebrow in question.
"And what does that mean?"
"Come, come, dear, you know precisely what I mean. You're that challenge," he accentuated the word lasciviously, "the difference between a depraved love and a constant war."
"You're insane."
Moriarty gave him a glittering grin, looking delighted.
"Whatever you wish to believe. It's what we are," he breathed a sigh, laced in regret that Sherlock ruled false, and took another inhale of the cigarette. "We'll burn out one day."
As if to emphasise his point he dropped the cigarette on the bench, twisting it round viciously until he'd ground the red tip to ash on the slightly damp surface. A vague hiss of steam misted up in protest that they both watched, transfixed, for a moment. Then when the noise faded and all that was left was their own breathing, Sherlock shook himself and returned his gaze to the skyline.
"I should hope so."
He heard rather than saw Moriarty reach inside his jacket pocket to tug out his packet of cigarettes and quickly, expertly, light another. The smoke mingled with the breeze again, covering his senses with the contrast of warmth and chill. Damn Moriarty. He linked his long fingers beneath his chin and blanked out the scent, closing his eyes into an expression of calmness that he knew would infuriate him. And sure enough, in his very predictable unpredictable manner, Moriarty responded, getting up from where he was sitting and standing before Sherlock. He leant down to his level so their faces were aligned and held the cigarette forwards, the smouldering end mere millimetres from Sherlock's lips, the smoke tickling the septum of his nose, a forced smoker's inhale. The clogging smell made him open his eyes as he tried not to cough, parting his lips slightly so he could breathe through his mouth and he kept steady, conscious of how close the pain was. He looked into Moriarty's eyes and watched him smile, his will abided by. Gently, soft like a caring lovers caress, he stroked his fingertips against the skin of Sherlock's cheek, his cold fingers hot like an ice burn. The hand holding the cigarette twisted so the other end brushed Sherlock's lips, a link from Moriarty's mouth to his. With the relief from the suffocating smell Sherlock breathed out. And then firmly closed his mouth.
Moriarty giggled, retracting the hand.
"Just when I thought I was winning. You do like to surprise me."
"I thought you were always 'one step ahead'."
"Oh I am. But like I said, you're a challenge and I do like one of those."
Sherlock shook his head as if to dispel the words and Moriarty, still bent down over him, chucked his second cigarette away carelessly so he could use that hand to grasp the other side of Sherlock's face and still him.
"What a waste," Sherlock commented dryly, ignoring the strange heat he was unaccustomed to starting to spread through his body.
"I never liked smoking," Moriarty replied, moving closer.
"That's illogical."
"Only do it to irritate you."
"That makes more sense."
When they kiss it's not really kissing. Not to Sherlock. Certainly not to Moriarty. Sherlock remembered, from some distant memory that he thought he'd discarded, reading when he was little, in one of his mother's "light empty trash books" that kissing was meant to be electricity and love and emotions all welled up in the connection of two people's lips. When their mouths join it's more like a war. Not harsh but consuming, both trying to prove themselves as triumphant until attrition seems the only tactic. They both have this understanding that shouldn't exist and it builds and builds into that fire that burns them, hot as they share every damned emotion they always cut off. Moriarty threaded his fingers through Sherlock's hair and anchored himself to the most buoyant rock of all whilst Sherlock held his hips, bringing him closer until he had to put his knees on either side of Sherlock's legs and fall flush against him.
Neither of them will ever say it but when the meeting of their minds spills into the meeting of their bodies, they have never felt more human.
When finally they surrendered, not to each other but to their fusion, and let each other go, Moriarty rested his forehead on Sherlock's and smiled, with a touch of truth rather than the mask upon mask he usually wore.
Sherlock smiled back and though he told himself it's because he very nearly had the upper hand, he knew it was not.
"Do you want to know something funny, Sherlock?" Moriarty asked as he disentangled himself from him, swinging fluidly to the side to sit next to him again. Sherlock raised his eyebrows to indicate that he did and leant back against the bench. "Sometimes I can really understand John."
"I'm sorry?"
"I'm not joking," he addressed the incredulity in Sherlock's voice before continuing, his gaze now fixed on the city before them, "I can see why he's so loyal to you. You really are fascinating."
Pushing down the sense of the growing, dangerous unfamiliarity of the situation, Sherlock frowned.
"That's not why he stays."
"Well why then? Because you're friends?" The old mocking tone was back, "Because he cares?"
"Yes. I wouldn't expect you to understand that."
"Pity I do."
There was a long silence, one that stretched out between them and gave Sherlock time to work on the new information. Part of the thrill of being around Moriarty was that he had to work hard to decipher what the man meant or if it was relevant or a trick. After being able to read people like a book for so long, he wondered if this was what it felt like to be normal and have to concentrate to figure people out. Perhaps that was one of the reasons he wanted to be around him.
In the end he tried to rework the situation.
"You don't care about me."
Moriarty gave a high and unnatural laugh. Sherlock knew he'd lost him again and cursed himself internally for making that mistake. It was so easy to get lost in one of Moriarty's facades that you forgot where he was pretending and where he was teasing and where he was being deadly honest.
"No, I don't," he agreed.
Sherlock gave a twisted sort of half smile.
"You are the most confusing, intriguing person I have ever met," he paused, surveying his companion for a reaction, "you're insane."
Even with the repetition of his words, as if they would in some way reassure him it was true, he knew Moriarty was not insane. He was the epitome of sanity, far too shrewd and astute with his cold, cutting ways, indeed he was perhaps the polar opposite to insanity. He had that control that the loosening of the mind lacked.
"I like it that way."
Sherlock leant over and kissed him again, quickly and surely, as though he were searching for information but wasn't going to risk getting caught for it. Moriarty's lips twitched like he wanted to smile.
"Do you want to know the difference between you and I?" he asked, reclining back like the bench was a luxury lounger rather than a fixed lot of graffitied wood dedicated to someone deceased. Sherlock gave a short laugh.
"I could tell you that for free."
"Oh yes, apart from the obvious point that you sit around doing fuck all while I actually get things done. Useful things."
"It sounds funny when you say fuck."
"It sounds funny when you say it."
They both laughed, surprised at something they weren't even sure they knew. Moriarty met Sherlock's eyes.
"No, no. I mean in here," he tapped his temple with his forefinger lightly, holding Sherlock's curious gaze. "You're so full of information and thoughts and deductions and logic and it's all twirling around in your mind, whirring and spinning. You're always at work in your brain. You love it. And that's the difference between you and me."
"You don't love it?"
"No. I'm quiet inside. It's all there, it's all working. But it's not alive."
Sherlock thought about making a joke, because despite John's insistence that he had no social tact at all, he knew the hazard of the situation, the minefield he was currently walking on, and he really rather wanted to actually return to John and hear the constant reprimands when he stepped out of line. But the seriousness in those eyes, those eyes that saw a thousand lives and glimmered with the lights of a million more, stopped him. The way Moriarty looked at him, no shame, no games, not anything, told him that this was a one time bargain of veracity and it was only because the reason they flourished was the worthiness of the other that he was even in the position to hear these words.
"Is that what you want from me?" Sherlock asked, quiet himself.
And for possibly the first time in his adult life Moriarty replied with,
"I don't know."
Not knowing, Sherlock thought, was perhaps the reason why it worked. Why the fire kept on burning. 'Ignorance is bliss' had always been a stupid phrase in his mind, a way for idiotic people to excuse their own mental incapacity. But in a peculiar sense he kind of understood now. Not knowing was the excitement with Moriarty. Never being even half sure was that risk he'd never got to take before. What was it John had said to him on their first case? He risked his life to prove he was clever. John had been right.
Now he risked his life to see the flame dance.
Jim Moriarty was the fire with a white hot heart that burned at the very centre of his being. He burnt with a ferocity that could catch you alight.
But then again, Sherlock had always had a fascination with fire.