The street was still deserted, the sun still high in the sky. To John, it seemed as if the world must have turned again and again since they entered the house, but in reality it could not have been more than half an hour. "I'm calling your brother," he announced. "Let him deal with this. Sherlock - !"

"No, you're not," Sherlock informed him as he pocketed the mobile he had just snatched out of John's hand, never breaking his stride. Before John had a chance to further object, he added: "He was bored with Jim Moriarty. He wanted out."

"Yeah, okay. No… what?"

"The criminal mastermind routine was getting boring. Always the villain, always one step ahead, no surprises, no challenges. He wanted something new. And he needed me for that. " Sherlock smiled faintly, introvert. "Thus the gift… "

John, still more than a little rattled by the unexpected encounter, fought to keep his voice level. Fortunately, he had had a lot of practice with that since first meeting Sherlock. "I'll just be quiet, shall I, and hope that sooner or later you'll start making sense."

Sherlock made a very visible effort not to sigh in exasperation. Undoubtedly he had had a lot of practice with that since first meeting John, though he was still not very good at it. "He can't cope with an unfinished melody. Just like Bach." Again, that faint, introverted smile. Damn, but it was annoying. John kept his tongue, however, as Sherlock continued. "He needed a proper ending to the tale of Jim Moriarty, the greatest criminal who ever lived. And I, as his single equal, was the only one who could provide him with one." The detective shrugged as they turned a corner and stepped back onto the main road. "And because he knows what it's like to be bored, truly bored, and desperate for distractions, he decided to leave me with on final puzzle to keep me occupied, keep me entertained; something to challenge me. And what could possibly be harder to return from than your own grave…?"

"That was a gift?"

"Yes. Obviously. Granted, not a very nice one, but the then again, he's not a very nice man."

"Jesus." John shook his head in disbelief. "He set the whole thing – crown jewels, Richard Brook, fake suicide and all – up just so he could have a 'proper ending'? Why the hell couldn't he simply have walked away?"

Sherlock gave him a look. "Because he is insane, John," he said patiently – or as close to patiently as Sherlock could manage.

"Well. Yes. Fair point." John glanced at the other, frowning. "And now… you want us to just leave him to play house?" He shook his head again. "Sherlock, we can't do that."

"Yes, we can," Sherlock told him as he hailed a passing cab. "We have to. If we come after him, we'll have restarted the game, restarted the story, and he'll have no choice but to play his old part. The one of a criminal mastermind leaving nothing but death and destruction in his wake." He paused for a moment before entering the car, fishing John's phone out of his pocket and tossing it to him. "If you want Jim Moriarty back on the streets of London, by all means, go ahead and call my brother. If not, we'll leave James Moran and his husband alone."

John didn't say anything as he joined Sherlock in the backseat. But he thought to himself as the car started driving: No. No, this won't do at all.

xxxxx

Sebastian waited until he was absolutely sure that Holmes and Watson had disappeared out of earshot before rounding on Jim. "What the hell were they doing here?" he demanded.

Jim raised an immaculately groomed eyebrow. "How should I know? You were the one who let them in after all, dear."

"Don't give me that fucking shit," Sebastian growled, raising a hand to point at the still all-but-naked man. Most people would have found a growling Sebastian Moran alarming indeed, but Jim did not as much as bat an eyelid; if anything, he seemed amused. That only made Sebastian angrier. "A woman mysteriously dead right outside our fucking front door, Jim?" he asked. "Attracting the attention of the great Sherlock Holmes no less, drawing him straight to our bloody doorstep. Just a coincidence, yeah?"

"Suicide," Jim said promptly. "I had nothing to do with that."

"Right, because there is no way you could force someone else to commit suicide." Sebastian's voice was thick with sarcasm.

"Of course I could, but I didn't," Jim told him, sounding bored. "Just drop it, Sebastian." His dark eyes narrowed as he added: "Just as I've decided to drop the fact that you talked back to me in the kitchen. That wasn't very nice of you, was it, pet? In front of guests and all."

"Go to hell," Sebastian spat. "Do you actually think that I give a shit about making you look bad in front of Sherlock fucking Holmes?

Jim smirked. "My, my, Tiger, are we feeling a tad jealous?" The smirk faded as Jim turned to walk back up the stairs. "It's not a very good look on you," he called coldly over his shoulder.

Sebastian remained where he was, very still, his own heartbeat pounding in his ears. "Was it an accident?" he asked quietly.

Jim stopped and turned to look at him, his brow furrowed. "What are you talking about?"

"When you put the gun in your mouth and pulled the trigger, did you actually mean to survive? Or was it just an… accident?" Sebastian did not look at Jim as he waited for an answer, keeping his eyes fixed on the Richard Sharpe Shaver hung over the side-table instead.

"What kind of question is that?" Jim voice was flat.

Sebastian shrugged. "You didn't tell me of your plan, so I'm thinking that maybe there wasn't one." Fuck, but it hurt, to put into words those old, nagging fears that had been lurking in the back of Sebastian's mind ever since the day Jim returned from the dead. "Maybe you were prepared to die on that roof." Leave me. For him.

"I didn't tell you of a lot of my plans," Jim noted, and Sebastian couldn't help but think that of all the extremely fucked up things that Jim was capable this was the one that actually scared the sniper; how Jim's voice, like his eyes or his face or his mind, could go completely empty. Nothing there. No one home.

He swallowed hard. "Yeah, but none of the others involved you faking your own fucking suicide." His own voice was rough, harsh, the words coming only with great difficulty.

And then Jim was standing right in front of him, and bloody hell, the man could move quickly when he wanted to, and his eyes weren't empty anymore, they were black with rage and he was snarling. "You're an idiot, Moran. You're just a fucking idiot, aren't you, just like the rest, you think you've got me all figured out, as if someone like you could ever hope to understand someone like me."

"But Sherlock Holmes can."

Jim punched him. Drew his fist and slammed it into Sebastian's shoulder, and sure, the guy was small, tiny even, but that still fucking hurt. "Get the hell out of my house," Jim hissed.

Sebastian turned and walked out without another word, grabbing his jacket on the way and slamming the front door shut behind him.

xxxxx

It was already well past ten and the street deserted once more, but the lights were still on in the two-storey house. John smiled mirthlessly to himself. He had figured that neither Moriarty nor Moran would be early sleepers.

Standing just outside of the reach of a lamppost's light, the doctor fixed his gaze on the small figure slumping on a barstool in the kitchen. Moriarty, now dressed in a white tee, was typing furiously, attention completely focused on the laptop on the table in front of him.

Moran was nowhere to be seen. That didn't matter; John was not here for him. In his pocket, the gun felt cold against his hand. He gripped it tightly, forcing himself to breathe normally, calmly –

He had not even had to come up with an excuse to get out of the flat; unless Sherlock needed something (fairly common) or was bored (very common), he often did not even notice if John was there or not. "I'm going out for a bit," John had called from the stairs, and Sherlock had grunted and that was that. Rather than grabbing a cab – because Sherlock would find the driver, of course he would – he had talked to Molly, and when he asked her not to ask she didn't, she just called a friend ("don't see her all that often, really, but our mums are great friends, we played all the time when we were little") and an hour later John was driving west in a gray Volvo. He parked the car outside a supermarket two blocks down and walked the rest of the way.

For a good five minutes now he had been standing in the shadows, watching the man in the kitchen on the other side of the street. Like this, all bad posture and tousled hair, Moriarty should not – did not – look dangerous, and still… Still, the mere sight of the scrawny man sent a shiver down John's spine – and John Watson did not, in spite of his oft-times timid appearance, scare easily.

In one smooth motion, he drew the gun out of his pocket, aiming it at the consulting criminal's head. One deep breath, two, three, focus, squeeze the trigger, gently -

He did not fire.

Moriarty was dangerous (the most dangerous criminal mind this world has ever seen, Mycroft's voice echoed in his head) and insane and evil, but…

But.

Defeated, John lowered his gun. Moriarty was evil, but John was not. He was a soldier, and he was a doctor, and he would not shoot an unarmed man in the back, no matter how twisted that man might be.

"Don't fret about it, Doc," a deep voice came from behind him. "You'd have been dead before you'd pulled the trigger."

Startled, John spun around, gun raised once more. In the darkness to his right, a lighter flickered into life, and then Sebastian Moran stepped out of the shadows, taking a long drag of his cigarette. In his right hand he held a gun of his own, and it was aimed at John.

John looked from Moran to the weapon and back again. "You knew I'd come?"

"Figured you might. I would have, had the roles been reversed. Of course, I would have pulled that trigger." Lowering his gun, Moran glanced at the house at the other side of the street, at the man in the kitchen. "Besides, we had a spat."

"Yeah? What about?"

"What do you think?" The taller man paused, hesitated. "Does Holmes think Jim had anything to do with the suicide?" he finally asked.

"No." John blinked, a little taken aback by the question. "No, not at all." He grimaced. "He says Moriarty wanted out. Wanted something new."

Something loosened in Moran's face then, relaxed. "Oh. All right." Snubbing out his cigarette, he put the gun back into his jacket pocket. "Well, since you're not killing anyone tonight, I'd better get back inside."

"Time to kiss and make up?"

The tall man laughed quietly. "Yeah, right. That's the way we roll." He shook his head. "No. He might let me kiss him softly and take him to bed; that's as close to apologizing as he'll ever come… but he's just as likely to inform me that I've got a hotel room in bloody Brixton booked for the foreseeable future." Moran shrugged. "He might just ask me if I brought him his sodding shaving cream, or he might fucking well shoot me in the head." He smiled thinly. "He's Jim Moriarty, yeah? No telling with him."

"And if he doesn't shoot you in the head?" John asked. "You'll… what? Live happily ever after?" He tried to imagine it, and failed utterly.

Moran snorted. "Fuck that shit. No one ever does anyway. We'll live. And – ," he paused, and when he spoke again, there was a faint trace of something almost akin to wonder in his voice, " – there is happiness."

Resting the urge to roll his eyes, John gave a short nod. "Yeah. Okay. Happiness. Got it." He turned to leave.

"Hey," the other man called after him. "Take my number."

That stopped him short in his tracks. "Why?" he asked, turning back to look at the blonde man.

Moran's face was carefully blank. "In case you have reason to think they're getting back in touch."

He didn't say anything else; he didn't need to. John saved his number, and – without being asked, without saying anything about it himself – dialed it, leaving his own on Moran's phone.

xxxxx

Jim did not look up as Sebastian stepped into the kitchen. He kept hammering away at his keyboard as the sniper – and Sebastian still thought of himself as one, even though he had not shot anyone in over three years – leaned against the doorframe, waiting for his boss – and Sebastian still thought of Jim as such, even though they had gotten married just a little less than three years ago – to acknowledge him.

"It wasn't an accident," Jim finally said, still not looking up from his computer screen.

Sebastian did not answer.

"I… " Jim hesitated, and bloody hell, Satan must be freezing his tail off down in hell, because Jim Moriarty never hesitated. "I never planned to die, exactly," Jim continued, his voice low. "But… it was a possibility. I knew I might have to, to win the game." He paused then, and turned to look at Sebastian. His eyes were wide and tired and very open. "But I guess I realized that there are more important things than winning. And I changed my mind."

"Yeah?" Sebastian asked carefully, but he did not wait for an answer. Crossing the floor in a few long strides, he pulled Jim up from the chair and into his arms.

"Yeah," Jim told him, smiling slightly as he relaxed into the embrace.

xxxxx

"Good for you, I guess," John muttered, watching as Moran bent down to scoop Moriarty up and carry him out of the kitchen. Just before they disappeared through the door, Moran threw a glance over his shoulder, as if to catch John's eyes through the window and across the street.

Then they were gone, and John turned his back on the two-storey house. Leaving its two inhabitants to their pleasures, he walked away.

xxxxx

Notes:

This took forever to finish, mainly because I'm a fickle bitch and got distracted by johmlock feelings (sorry, tumblr, I just don't have feels. I'm not that kind of fangirl… ). But since I got a nasty cold preventing me from partying my ass off this fine Friday night, I decided to do something fun and finish this. If there is weirdness, I blame it entirely on the fever and the pinotage (it's Friday night, you guys! Even sick girls need a glass of wine).

So theoretically, this is a MorMor fic, although mostly told from John's point of view. Still, there are all these hints of Sheriarty and Johnbastian (and even Johnlock, I suppose, if that's your cup of tea and you got your slash tinted glasses on… ). *shrugs* Oh, well. The more love the merrier, that's what I always say (well, I've never actually said that before, and I'm not even saying it now, I'm typing it, and did I mention the wine?)

There is a sentiment expressed by Sebastian that's more or less (mostly more) ripped from Steven King's The Dark Tower: "And will I tell you that these three lived happily ever after? I will not, for no one ever does. But there was happiness. And they did live. […] That's all. That's enough." Go read that series, it's awesome. Okay, the ending is a bit of a letdown, but the first book in the series, The Gunslinger, has the best opening line in the history of literature, which pretty much makes up for it. Book five is one big mindfuck, but that's cool, as long as you're into twisted meta. I sure as hell am.