Sherlock doesn't give Greg time to think or reconsider or anything. That's not his way.
Greg finally goes home and crashes for five hours of restless, nightmare-filled sleep. For the rest of the day, he runs errands. He cleans his tiny flat, drops off the dry cleaning, goes grocery shopping, and manages to live a normal life until he gets a text from Sherlock. It's an address that Greg doesn't immediately recognize, and suddenly he's got a bad feeling.
On my way, he texts back, and leaves most of his groceries on the counter.
He takes the Tube, paying cash instead of using his Oyster card. It's Saturday evening, early enough that the Tube's crowded. In his jeans and T-shirt and leather jacket, Greg blends in with the crowd. Once the train reaches Greg's stop, he heads straight for the texted address. It's a grey door stuck like an afterthought between an abandoned hardware store and a used clothing shop. The paint on the door is peeling, showing splotches of rust beneath.
A quick look up and down the street shows a distinct lack of CCTV cameras. He thinks back to last night (this morning), when Sherlock had said, "I have just the place."
Greg goes even colder inside, because he knows what he's going to find on the other side of that door. Wishing he had a weapon, he pushes the door. It's not locked. It swings open, and Greg slips inside.
The door opens onto a staircase, black as night. When he's working, Greg carries a torch in his pocket. Now, feeling like an idiot, he has to turn on his phone and find the flashlight app he downloaded. It's just enough light for him to see that he doesn't want to touch the walls with bare hands, and by the time he's halfway up the stairs, he's thinking he might just bin his trainers when he gets home.
No one lives here — he's sure of that. Junkies have made it in a few times, but there are no squatters. The building's probably caught up in some legal mess that's keeping it deserted, and now Greg knows what he's going to find when he gets to wherever the hell Sherlock is lurking.
He's not on the first floor or the second. No, leave it to Sherlock to make Greg go up three goddamn flights of stairs to the top floor. Greg's in good shape, but he won't see the sunny side of forty again, and his knees have never quite recovered from his rugby days.
At the top of the stairs, Greg pushes open the door to the flat. There's no light, but Greg hears sound coming from the back — a strange sort of rustling, more like plastic than paper. He walks through a dingy front room and a narrow kitchen, into what he figures is meant to be the bedroom.
There's a man on the floor, thrashing weakly on top of a painter's tarp, which explains the noises. He's bound with duct tape around his ankles, thighs, and body, pinning his hands at his sides. There are multiple wraps around his mouth, and in the light of the flashlight app, Greg can see that his cheeks are puffed out. Sherlock's too clever to trust duct tape alone to keep him silent.
"Is that Whitly?"
Sherlock's voice scares the fuck out of Greg, who feels like an idiot for just strolling in and not checking his back. He looks over his shoulder to see Sherlock lurking against the wall beside the door.
He's in jeans and a hoodie and a battered army jacket that fits too well for him to have stolen it from John. He's wearing blue nitrile gloves, and holding another pair between his fingers. Greg never imagined he could look even hotter out of his fucking overcoat and suits and too-tight shirts. And that's when it hits him: They're really going to do this.
They are really fucking going to do this together, and the only fucking rational thought in Greg's head is, I can't fuck this up.
"Jesus," Greg mutters, tearing his eyes away. He goes to the guy on the floor, because as much as he suddenly wants this, he has to be sure. He'll call this off — he'll fucking arrest Sherlock for assault and kidnapping and unlawful imprisonment if this guy isn't Greg's next chosen target.
But of course, Sherlock got it right. It's George Whitly, thirty-eight, construction worker and borderline alcoholic with an ASBO. George Whitly, the bastard paedo who scared five little girls out of testifying and scared one into hanging herself in her closet. The guy's terrified, and that's exactly how it should be, by Greg's way of thinking.
The plan was to strangle him, to tie a rope around his neck and let him gasp and thrash and die slowly, just like that poor little girl had, because her death hadn't been a clean snap of the neck. She'd fought and kicked and bloodied herself clawing at her own throat when the fall from a stack of boxes hadn't killed her.
But Greg's got nothing with him. He can't use his belt or the laces of his trainers, because both will leave trace evidence. He'll have to improvise, maybe use the duct tape. "Yeah. It's him," he says, rising from his crouch and reaching out a hand to take the gloves.
Only Sherlock moves first, and something hard impacts Greg's wrist, sending a burning shock of pain up through his arm. He shouts something — he has no idea what — as Sherlock pulls Greg off-balance.
The phone goes flying as Greg hits the wall face-first. He's decent in a scrap, but he remembers that Sherlock studied some sort of martial arts an age ago, and apparently he forgot none of it. Greg doesn't have a chance in hell to get free before the other cuff closes around his wrist, trapping his hands behind his back.
Sherlock holds him there, not reacting at all to Greg's swearing and threats, and he doesn't say a fucking word until Greg falls silent. Then he asks, "Why are you fighting me?"
"What the fuck do you think you're doing?" Greg barks out, stopping himself from using Sherlock's name at the last instant.
"That's not an answer."
Greg can't keep from pulling at the cuffs before he realizes precisely where he's touching Sherlock's body. Thank God Sherlock's not hard, though his breath does catch a little before Greg stops moving.
"This time, you watch," Sherlock says, his voice cold and clinical.
Shit. Greg shakes his head and tries to turn around, though Sherlock has no trouble at all keeping him in place. "Sherlock," he says before he can stop himself. "No. You've never killed anyone. Or — have you?"
Sherlock laughs. It's his usual laugh, but so close to Greg's ear, with Greg helpless in cuffs and pinned to the wall, the sound takes on a filthy edge that short-circuits Greg's brain.
"No," Sherlock says, and then he's gone.
Greg lets his forehead fall against the wall for a moment. Then he turns, leaning his shoulders back against the moldering wallpaper, not trusting himself to stay upright without support. It is so fucking wrong that he's thinking of Sherlock and not death, because no matter how much the fucking bastard on the floor deserves to die, this isn't something Greg takes lightly. The moment deserves respect, for the sake of the victims.
Sherlock's not about to let Greg get out of this without seeing every second of it. He picks up Greg's mobile and sets it down on the plastic wrap. Sherlock doesn't have a whole roll of duct tape; it looks like he hand-rolled just enough for tonight into a compact bundle. He has to struggle to unwrap it without getting his gloves caught.
The sound is incredibly loud even over the wheezing, nasal breaths and the rustle of plastic. When Sherlock finally rips a six-inch strip off the roll, Whitly starts thrashing in earnest. Sherlock leans forward and smooths the tape over Whitly's nostrils, tucking it neatly around the shape of his nose, sealing it to the wraps over his mouth. Whitly kicks and squeals, head thrashing from side to side. Sherlock picks up Greg's mobile, turning the light on Whitly, and then steps back, watching the man die.
