Here we go! Next chapter.
John decided to meet Sherlock at his flat in the afternoon, since he needed to contact Moriarty and keep him in the loop. He loved knowing what was going on with all John's kills, it exhilarated him. It just made John sick, but he had no other choice.
He quickly shuffled through an alley and made his way to an unobservable place in the city. John guarded this with a great deal of care, because there were so few areas of London not covered by the CCTV. He always felt like someone was constantly watching him when he saw a camera. John's paranoia from the war hadn't gotten better since he started working for Moriarty, after all.
He pulled out the phone that Sherlock had been texting from, noting that nothing else of his personal contacts or messages had been touched. Sherlock trusted him. John felt an extreme sadness threaten to overtake him. None of this was John's fault, somewhere inside, he knew that. But that didn't matter to Sherlock, or to Moriarty.
John wondered how much of his soul was left. According to J.K. Rowling, the soul split every time you killed someone. The only soul left in his body could have been one fiftieth, or maybe one sixtieth of what it used to be. Where did all those little pieces of soul go? Were they simply scattered in the wind, or attached to others? Did someone have a piece of his soul? He knew Moriarty would love to take that opportunity. But maybe the soul just withered away until there was nothing left. John was certain that would happen someday.
He dialed the number marked 'Jimmy', since that was what Moriarty put himself in John's phone as. It was a very good way to not get caught, to have your all-powerful boss's first name in your phone. People never checked that closely, they normally thought Jimmy was just a mate. If only they knew! John put the phone to his ear.
"So, you met him, then?" Moriarty sounded so excited. "He's wonderful, isn't he? This job should be pretty easy."
"Yeah, he's a genius. Like you." John let a little fondness leak through, to potentially placate his boss.
"Yes, rather like me." He tsked. "But you can't allow him to get to you, Johnny."
"I won't. You don't need to worry about me."
Moriarty laughed. "I never do. But I can't help it sometimes. Sometimes I think you're going to find someone else, and you're going to leave me all alone with the boring people. Maybe you'll find yourself a pretty little wife and a white picket fence someday."
"It's not in the cards for me, James," John said softly. "Nor is it in the cards for Mr. Holmes."
His boss was smiling, he could almost hear it through the speaker. "Quite right about that last part. You're meeting him later to look at the flat, correct?"
"I am."
"Good. I hope you like it there. I might let you have it after he's gone." He said it like a sort of reward, like he was convincing a child to pick up their toys. John wanted to throw up, but he had to keep acting.
"Thanks. Anyway, I should probably go. Sherlock looked pretty eager."
"Eager for Johnny to come see him, how novel." Moriarty giggled and said his goodbye, hanging up the phone. John put his mobile in his pocket slowly, beginning to walk back into the CCTV range again. The streets were just as crowded as they were before, and the people were no less impatient, but John was different from all of them. His heart had stopped moving, and his legs had far too much patience. The longer he dragged this out, the longer he had before he had to go.
The door for 221B had a crooked brass knocker. John had a feeling that someone walking by would like to straighten it every time it happened, but he liked it. He knocked on the door and an older woman opened it. "You must be John, Sherlock's been talking about you all day!"
"Really?" John smiled. "He made more of an impression on me."
"He tends to, but at least you're here now. Biscuit?" She held out a plate of them, and he neatly declined. Eating after talking to Moriarty was a bad idea, he had learned. "Sherlock, John's here!" she called up the stairs.
When John stepped inside, the first thing he noticed was the violin music coming from a higher floor. It was...beautiful, complicated, and fast. Damn, he always had a thing for musicians. And geniuses. And madmen. Ugh! He huffed and climbed the steps, stopping at the first landing and peeking into the room. Sherlock wore a dressing gown and slacks, an odd combination, but it seemed to suit him. He never stopped playing, even when John knew he knew who had just walked in.
The song completed, Sherlock turned around and grinned at him, effectively knocking John's socks off. He had the worst luck in the world. "I would give you the tour, but it's fairly self-explanatory. The kitchen is through there, the bathroom and my bedroom down the hall, and you're standing in the sitting room." He paused. "Do you like it?"
John's heart melted at his tone of voice. "Yeah." He walked further into the flat, turning in a circle as he looked around. The wallpaper mismatched in some places, there was a yellow smiley face painted on the wall, two skulls occupied separate places in the room. Also, there seemed to be something dead on the countertop. John's lips spread in a smile. "I can't really explain it, but it feels like..."
"Home?" Sherlock asked, quirking an eyebrow at him.
"Yeah. How'd you know?"
"I didn't know, I saw." He set his violin down on the couch.
"You're awfully observant, aren't you?"
"I'm rather insulted you didn't figure that out before now." The two men smirked at each other, and John sat down in the comfy-looking red chair across from where Sherlock stood, carefully balancing his cane on the end table.
The woman from earlier came to the door and said, "There's a second bedroom upstairs if you'll be needing it."
John looked at her in surprise. "Thanks for saying so."
"Mrs. Hudson, I would like a cup of coffee," Sherlock interjected, embarrassment flashing over his face. "Black, two sugars."
"Dear, I'm not your housekeeper, just your landlady," she said, but she disappeared, presumably to make coffee.
"Am I the only one that thinks she says that far too often with her actions contradicting her?" John asked, refusing to let Sherlock try to justify what she said before. He didn't need to do that, John got it. Sherlock was lonely, and someone else just happened to notice. He couldn't be the only who noticed things.
"You aren't. I've thought that as long as I've known her." Sherlock waved a hand in dismissal. "But having Mrs. Hudson as both is quite helpful when it comes to getting a really reduced rate."
"I don't have any income right now, but I promise I'll get a job soon," John said worriedly. Killing didn't pay much right now, Moriarty liked playing with it so John would keep coming back, as if he needed more incentive to go back to him.
"I make enough to tide us over for a month or two." Sherlock shrugged indulgently.
"How did you get the reduced rates, anyway?" John was honestly curious. Prime flatshares were so difficult to come by, especially in this part of town, that there had to be a very good reason.
Sherlock walked straight up to John's chair and knelt in front of him, staring John in the eye. "Mrs. Hudson's husband was being charged with murder in Florida, and I solved the case."
"So you stopped him from being killed?" Death row had a certain significance to a man that killed people for money about every other week. He'd rather end up dead by Moriarty's hand than after a trial and long imprisonment. That should clarify his feelings on the subject. John hated the idea of dying like that.
"No, I ensured it." Sherlock's mouth quirked up. John suddenly noticed how close they were sitting; Sherlock was virtually in his lap, and John's hands could just reach down and wrap around his waist and pull him closer...But this was what Moriarty wanted. He had to stop.
Before he could move, Mrs. Hudson came back up the stairs with Sherlock's coffee. She nearly dropped it when she saw them, but then she simply smiled. "Your coffee's ready, dear. The pot's full in my kitchen if you would like some as well, John."
"Thank you, Mrs. Hudson," John managed to choke out. She set the cup of coffee on the end table with John's cane and left the room, saying something about visiting her friend Mrs. Turner next door. Sherlock slowly stood up and went to the window once she was gone; John barely registered police sirens. The other man's back was turned, so John couldn't see his face, or know if he did something wrong. He could not blow this.
Sherlock watched something out the window for a minute or so, maybe it was the police cars. It sounded as if three or more of them were all heading the same direction. "There's been another one!" he shouted gleefully, the opposite of how John thought he'd react from being come on to by another man. "And this one's different!"
"What are you on about, Sherlock?" Mrs. Hudson asked from the doorway, having brought a cup of coffee up for John as well.
"The serial suicides, of course!" Sherlock threw off his dressing gown and runs to the coatrack. "Three so far, none have left any sort of note, but this one has! Oh, my darling housekeeper, it's Christmas!" He slipped on his long, dark coat and a blue scarf and practically flew down the stairs, shouting up, "I'd like my coffee heated up for when I get back!"
John rolled his eyes. He had known Sherlock for perhaps a few hours, and he already understood that this was common behavior. Sherlock ran off when something interesting caught his attention, just like Moriarty, but Sherlock was more like a child playing cops and robbers than an insane criminal. It warmed him from the inside out.
Mrs. Hudson picked his cane off the end table and held it out to him, because she knew he was going after him. John gratefully smiled at her and somehow stood up, limping toward the door. While the landlady began to clean the kitchen, muttering about how she wished Sherlock would stop bringing disembodied toes home, John tried to go down the stairs. Maybe if he followed the sirens, he'd make it to the crime scene before the other man was off again.
It turned out that he didn't have to. Sherlock hadn't left yet.
"You've seen a lot of carnage in your time, haven't you? A lot of pain, a lot of death." Sherlock had his elbow propped on the handrail at the bottom of the stairs. John was sure he was intentionally blocking John's way.
"I have. Far too much, actually."
The other man took John's hand as he came down the last three steps. "Want to see some more?"
John smiled. "Oh God yes." On that, whether with Sherlock or Moriarty, he could always be sure.
The crime scene was on the second floor of a building in Lauriston Gardens, a bit decrepit and shabby, but John knew this killer was smart. You always chose places to kill people where you were unlikely to be discovered for a while. The woman laid facedown on the floor, her left hand next to a message carved into the wood floor. 'Rache', but it looked incomplete, and the woman's hand looked ready to begin another letter. "Rachel?" John asked aloud.
Sherlock glanced at him in surprise. "Yes. It says Rachel, but the significance of that is sadly unknown." He cocked his head and stared at the body intently.
A rather annoying, mousy man peeking in said, "It's obviously the German for revenge. I don't know why you didn't see it."
"Yes, thank you." Sherlock shut the door in the man's face. "Now, what's the meaning of Rachel?"
"Could be her daughter, she's about that age," John suggested. "She scratched the name into the floor, so it has to be someone very important to her."
"John, that's brilliant!" Sherlock exclaimed, looking at him like he was the sun for one glorious moment. "What would I do without you?"
John winced. You wouldn't die if I wasn't here to kill you.
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