In the end, their client shoots himself. "Guilt complex," sneers Sherlock when he gets the news, and John can tell that he's desperate for a change, for something clever, for something more original than a vigilante's remorse. It was time to make a decision.

"Maybe we should call Mycroft," John suggests, and he smiles at the resultant look of empty horror on his flatmate's face.

"He's so obvious," Sherlock complains, his tone tinged with the boredom of old money, "have you met anyone more indulgent?"

John takes in Sherlock's refined posture, his silken blue shirt, the aristocratic curl of his hair and might be forgiven for feeling momentarily as though Sherlock is discussing nineteenth-century portraiture and not the personality of what amounts to the most organized of organized crime regimes in Europe.

"He'd take care of it," John insists.

"Unless James Moriarty is part banana cream pie, I doubt that my brother will show much of an interest."

He slumps back onto the couch and doesn't speak until tea, during which John learns more than he ever wanted to know about defense missiles.

Neither cares that the last installment of the payment for the vigilante case will never come through.

"Cheer up, darling," Jim tells Sebastian, "you can't shoot them all."

Jim rubs his nose against Seb's with a smiling sigh and the latter pulls away to wrench open the fridge and chug the rest of the milk even though it's two days past due. Seb just thinks that it was nice of the man, taking care of it himself and all that. Saved a couple bullets, a few hours' stake-out. Cleaning his gun afterwards.

Not that it mattered, he'd need to clean it after tonight.

Jim's tongue is suddenly in Sebastian's mouth—needed my calcium, he says later—and after Seb takes a minute to make sure they have everything, they're in a cab.

It's midnight when they arrive at the pool.