An Empty House (6/10)
Title - An Empty House (6/10)
Author - earlgreytea68
Rating - Teen
Characters - John, Mycroft, Sherlock
Spoilers - Through "The Reichenbach Fall"
Disclaimer - I don't own them and I don't make money off of them, but I don't like to dwell on that, so let's move on.
Summary - As it says on the tin: Sherlock Holmes comes home.
Author's Notes - Thank you to all the usuals, to arctacuda for the excellent beta and sensiblecat for the lovely Britpick.
I don't think knowledge of the rest of my Sherlockfic is necessarily needed, although this does exist in the same Scotch-verse. If you're wondering about all the little background facts referenced here (who knows the secret? what's the deal with the violin? why the heck are Mycroft and Lestrade a couple?), you should read "Scotch" and "John Watson's 12 Things Happy People Do." (And, to a much, much lesser extent, "Middlegame.")
Chapter One - Chapter Two - Chapter Three - Chapter Four - Chapter Five
Chapter Six
John wanted a million things explained to him. It was a familiar feeling. And one he had missed acutely over the past eight months.
Sherlock hailed a cab with the ease with which Sherlock had always hailed cabs. John had missed that, too.
John started with what he thought might be the most straightforward question. “What are you talking about, ‘Moriarty’?”
Sherlock looked at him, that impatient how-can-you-be-confused look he had.
“Did Moriarty fake his death, too?”
“Oh. No. That man, back there, is also Moriarty.”
“Also Moriarty?” John echoed.
“Moriarty’s brother.”
“Avenging his death?”
“More likely looking for this.” Sherlock peered closely out the cab window while simultaneously casually producing a thumb drive from somewhere underneath his coat, holding it up briefly, and putting it back wherever it had come from.
“What’s that?” asked John, dreading the answer.
“Mycroft’s file on Moriarty. The original Moriarty.”
“How did you get that?”
“My brother leaves the damnedest things in his desk,” Sherlock responded, lightly.
“Sherlock. You’re just going to hand that over?”
“Of course not.” Sherlock sent him a brief, withering look of annoyance. “That would be stupid.”
“Why are we going to see Moriarty, then?”
“To negotiate a truce.”
“With top-secret files stolen from your brother?”
“Not entirely,” said Sherlock, and turned up the collar of his coat as if that were going to distract John from the line of questioning.
“You can’t negotiate a truce with a madman; he’s going to kill both of us as soon as he sees us.”
“No, he won’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because he’s a Moriarty, he doesn’t get his hands dirty. Anyway, if he kills me, or you, I won’t tell him where I’ve hidden the file he wants so desperately.”
John stared at him. “But you have the file with you.”
“He doesn’t know that, does he?”
“This is a terrible plan. What would the terms of this truce be? He’ll kill you as soon as you do reveal the location of the file.”
“No, because by then I’ll have everything in place.”
“You’ll have what in place?” asked John, exasperated.
Sherlock turned suddenly, closed the space between them, placed a possessive hand along John’s jaw, and kissed him.
Sherlock would use that strategically, John thought, and he really shouldn’t let him, but he kissed him back anyway, because actually kissing Sherlock was impossibly a million times better than any fantasy John had ever had about it.
He let Sherlock time the kiss, let him draw back to end it, and said, opening his eyes and finding them full of Sherlock still close in front of him, “Don’t think you’re going to do that every time you don’t want to hear what I’m telling you.”
“No?” Sherlock looked as if he thought that was a splendid idea.
John thought that he probably looked as if he thought that was a splendid idea, too. “Shut up,” said John, and when he closed his hands into that absurdly upturned collar and pulled him in for another kiss, Sherlock was smiling.
After too short a time, Sherlock sat back against the door, looked at John as if nothing interesting had just happened, and said, “I believe you have a key to an empty house.”
***
Sherlock had a theory that Moriarty wished to use the empty house as a rendezvous point. As if it made sense to have rendezvous with criminal masterminds who wanted to kill you. John didn’t like Sherlock’s plan, but had decided against wasting time trying to talk him out of it. It was more efficient to come up with a plan of his own, John had learned, and he was happy to be using that learning again. Now he just had to come up with a plan…
Sherlock reached into his coat and pulled out a gun, which he handed to John.
“Oh, thank God,” said John, because he’d been feeling a bit bereft without his. Time with Sherlock made you realize the comfort of having a gun at the small of your back. He accepted the gun with pleasure. “Where did you get this?”
“Mycroft.”
“Mycroft let you have a gun?”
“Mycroft thought I might need a gun. You’re the better shot though, and anyway, I’m going to have talking to do. I’d rather you keep the gun.”
“Plus, you’re bloody irresponsible with guns.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Yes,” said John, calmly, tucking the gun into his trousers. “You are.”
“We’ll talk about this later,” Sherlock decided.
“No, we won’t,” said John, thinking two could play at the snog-away-undesirable-conversations game.
“I need you to keep the gun on Moriarty, as soon as he walks through the door.”
“Well, that shouldn’t be hard,” John remarked.
“It should keep him from killing us while I negotiate with him.”
“Should?” echoed John.
Sherlock ignored him, and also ignored the chirp of his mobile with a text message.
“Is that Mycroft?” Sherlock didn’t need to answer, because it was answered by John’s mobile chirping with a text. John glanced at it. Make him phone me. Mycroft Holmes. “He wants to talk to you.”
“Of course he does,” Sherlock muttered, glancing out the car window at their progress. “He always wants to talk.”
“Sherlock, I don’t like anything about this idea. I think we should kill Moriarty right away and-”
“If we kill Moriarty right away, what happens to us as a result?” asked Sherlock, mildly.
“We get to go home, safe and sound, and live to fight another day.”
“Or Moriarty’s associates take us out immediately.”
“Sherlock-”
“Oh, look, here we are,” said Sherlock, pleasantly, as the cab drew to a stop.
Convenient, thought John. He hoped Sherlock’s luck was going to continue to hold and neither of them died today.
“I don’t have the key anymore,” John told Sherlock, as they walked up to the front door. “Mycroft has it.”
“Who needs keys?” asked Sherlock. “Keys are boring.”
“We’re going to break into this house, and Mycroft’s going to send the police after us.”
“No, he’s not.”
“Why not?”
Sherlock had made quick work of the lock, opening the door easily. John pretended that wasn’t sexy. “Really not Mycroft’s style.” Sherlock was walking swiftly through the house’s dusty hallway.
“I think it sounds exactly like Mycroft’s style,” John protested, following him.
“So it really is an empty house,” Sherlock concluded, reaching the back of the house and peering out the dirty windows at a small crowded alley. He turned abruptly back toward the front of the house, down the cramped hallway they’d strode down. “I assumed everyone had missed something, but it really is an empty house, Professor.”
John, confused, glanced back toward the front of the house, too, and the man with the cigar-Professor Moriarty, John assumed-glided out of one of the rooms off the hallway, still puffing casually on his cigar. John, startled, pulled his gun quickly, leveling it on him.
The man looked vaguely amused. “Really, Dr. Watson? Is that necessary?”
“I wanted to ensure we’d have an opportunity to talk,” responded Sherlock, smoothly.
“And discussions at gunpoint are always so fruitful,” said Moriarty.
“You have done extensive research into that proposition,” Sherlock replied.
Moriarty’s cigar glowed orange for a moment. “Indeed.”
“You’re looking for your brother’s file,” said Sherlock.
“I’m looking for many things, Mr. Holmes.”
“True, but the file is of paramount importance. And I know where it is.”
“So do I.”
“The difference being that I can get it.”
“Really?”
“Not without something in exchange, of course.”
“Do you imagine that we are bargaining with each other now?”
“No, I don’t imagine it at all. I have the file already.”
John was watching Moriarty closely, his gun aimed at his heart, so he could tell that this surprised him. “Your brother-”
“You’ll have done your research. The weakness in my brother’s security is always me.”
“True.” Moriarty walked slowly over to Sherlock, John keeping the gun level on him, his trigger finger ready to take a shot under the slightest provocation.
“Careful, Dr. Watson would love any excuse to kill you,” Sherlock said, mildly, holding his ground as Moriarty approached.
“Which would be a terrible mistake, as you know. For you and for Dr. Watson.” Moriarty drew to a halt only a foot or so away from Sherlock, regarding him with what looked like genuine interest. “You are a great deal of trouble,” he remarked.
“Thank you,” said Sherlock.
“A great deal of trouble to your brother. It is of no surprise to me at all that he has ignored the threat on your life should I die and stationed snipers outside to dispatch me. I am surprised, however, that he doesn’t value his detective inspector’s life more.”
John kept his gun steady but couldn’t help glancing toward the front door. Snipers positioned outside, he thought.
“Mycroft wouldn’t send snipers,” Sherlock denied, impatiently.
“You underestimate how little he values your life. Anyone’s life, apparently.”
John’s thoughts went whirling through his head. If Mycroft had sent snipers…Mycroft was calling Moriarty’s bluff.
“You have one week, Mr. Holmes,” Moriarty continued. “Now, you’ll excuse me if I exit by the back door.”
And if Mycroft was calling his bluff, thought John, if Mycroft was calling his bluff…
It suddenly burst over John exactly how much had been done to him and to Sherlock by the Moriartys. John thought of the suffocating emptiness of the Baker Street flat, of the experiments stalled midway through, of the sheet music going unplayed, of the conversations he’d never gotten to have and the blogs he’d never gotten to write. He thought of things he hadn’t let himself think of in months, thought of standing on a street and watching Sherlock leap off a building, thought of the stillness of his body and the shiny black marble of his gravestone. He thought of the times he’d cried when he hadn’t wanted to cry, and of the times he hadn’t slept when he’d wanted to sleep. He thought of long interminable days in which nothing interesting happened, and of nights when he woke up convinced Sherlock was up and about, in the next room, about to wake him to run an errand for an adventure. He thought of standing in the middle of a busy London street, searching for a cab, and feeling so crushed by loneliness that he couldn’t breathe. He thought of dragging himself to his flat and crumpling onto the sofa, exhausted with missing Sherlock. He thought of the weight of all the things he had never said to him, the weight of all the questions left unasked, and he remembered so vividly the suffocating pressure of all those words, withering inside of him.
And he thought how it had all happened because these men, these Moriarty brothers, had twisted the very best thing in his life until it had become a weapon. Whatever Sherlock’s feelings for John-and John thought they were too complicated to ever be put into words-Sherlock had done everything he could to save him. It had been the Moriartys’ surefire way of beating Sherlock Holmes, and now John saw it was their way of beating all of them, this ridiculous group of people who had all worked so hard to keep each other safe. Moriarty’s power only existed so long as they all placed keeping each other alive above all things.
Mycroft was calling Moriarty’s bluff, John realized, because if Mycroft didn’t call his bluff then the fact of their complex and tangled emotions regarding each other would stay twisted into a weapon that would only hurt them.
John thought of the bleak emptiness of the last eight months of his life. Here, he thought, in this empty house, he was going to take the first step to never being as empty as that again.
John thought all this in a split second, like being abruptly ducked under water. Moriarty was still speaking to Sherlock. “Your brother may wish to see what happens to you should I die. I, however, desire to keep you alive a bit longer,” he was saying, and then he turned his back, clearly about to depart through the back door.
“Moriarty,” said John, evenly, the gun’s weight steady in his hands, and Moriarty half turned toward him, looking politely curious. “You’ve got it the wrong way ’round,” John informed him, and then pulled the trigger.
Next
Author - earlgreytea68
Rating - Teen
Characters - John, Mycroft, Sherlock
Spoilers - Through "The Reichenbach Fall"
Disclaimer - I don't own them and I don't make money off of them, but I don't like to dwell on that, so let's move on.
Summary - As it says on the tin: Sherlock Holmes comes home.
Author's Notes - Thank you to all the usuals, to arctacuda for the excellent beta and sensiblecat for the lovely Britpick.
I don't think knowledge of the rest of my Sherlockfic is necessarily needed, although this does exist in the same Scotch-verse. If you're wondering about all the little background facts referenced here (who knows the secret? what's the deal with the violin? why the heck are Mycroft and Lestrade a couple?), you should read "Scotch" and "John Watson's 12 Things Happy People Do." (And, to a much, much lesser extent, "Middlegame.")
Chapter One - Chapter Two - Chapter Three - Chapter Four - Chapter Five
Chapter Six
John wanted a million things explained to him. It was a familiar feeling. And one he had missed acutely over the past eight months.
Sherlock hailed a cab with the ease with which Sherlock had always hailed cabs. John had missed that, too.
John started with what he thought might be the most straightforward question. “What are you talking about, ‘Moriarty’?”
Sherlock looked at him, that impatient how-can-you-be-confused look he had.
“Did Moriarty fake his death, too?”
“Oh. No. That man, back there, is also Moriarty.”
“Also Moriarty?” John echoed.
“Moriarty’s brother.”
“Avenging his death?”
“More likely looking for this.” Sherlock peered closely out the cab window while simultaneously casually producing a thumb drive from somewhere underneath his coat, holding it up briefly, and putting it back wherever it had come from.
“What’s that?” asked John, dreading the answer.
“Mycroft’s file on Moriarty. The original Moriarty.”
“How did you get that?”
“My brother leaves the damnedest things in his desk,” Sherlock responded, lightly.
“Sherlock. You’re just going to hand that over?”
“Of course not.” Sherlock sent him a brief, withering look of annoyance. “That would be stupid.”
“Why are we going to see Moriarty, then?”
“To negotiate a truce.”
“With top-secret files stolen from your brother?”
“Not entirely,” said Sherlock, and turned up the collar of his coat as if that were going to distract John from the line of questioning.
“You can’t negotiate a truce with a madman; he’s going to kill both of us as soon as he sees us.”
“No, he won’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because he’s a Moriarty, he doesn’t get his hands dirty. Anyway, if he kills me, or you, I won’t tell him where I’ve hidden the file he wants so desperately.”
John stared at him. “But you have the file with you.”
“He doesn’t know that, does he?”
“This is a terrible plan. What would the terms of this truce be? He’ll kill you as soon as you do reveal the location of the file.”
“No, because by then I’ll have everything in place.”
“You’ll have what in place?” asked John, exasperated.
Sherlock turned suddenly, closed the space between them, placed a possessive hand along John’s jaw, and kissed him.
Sherlock would use that strategically, John thought, and he really shouldn’t let him, but he kissed him back anyway, because actually kissing Sherlock was impossibly a million times better than any fantasy John had ever had about it.
He let Sherlock time the kiss, let him draw back to end it, and said, opening his eyes and finding them full of Sherlock still close in front of him, “Don’t think you’re going to do that every time you don’t want to hear what I’m telling you.”
“No?” Sherlock looked as if he thought that was a splendid idea.
John thought that he probably looked as if he thought that was a splendid idea, too. “Shut up,” said John, and when he closed his hands into that absurdly upturned collar and pulled him in for another kiss, Sherlock was smiling.
After too short a time, Sherlock sat back against the door, looked at John as if nothing interesting had just happened, and said, “I believe you have a key to an empty house.”
***
Sherlock had a theory that Moriarty wished to use the empty house as a rendezvous point. As if it made sense to have rendezvous with criminal masterminds who wanted to kill you. John didn’t like Sherlock’s plan, but had decided against wasting time trying to talk him out of it. It was more efficient to come up with a plan of his own, John had learned, and he was happy to be using that learning again. Now he just had to come up with a plan…
Sherlock reached into his coat and pulled out a gun, which he handed to John.
“Oh, thank God,” said John, because he’d been feeling a bit bereft without his. Time with Sherlock made you realize the comfort of having a gun at the small of your back. He accepted the gun with pleasure. “Where did you get this?”
“Mycroft.”
“Mycroft let you have a gun?”
“Mycroft thought I might need a gun. You’re the better shot though, and anyway, I’m going to have talking to do. I’d rather you keep the gun.”
“Plus, you’re bloody irresponsible with guns.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Yes,” said John, calmly, tucking the gun into his trousers. “You are.”
“We’ll talk about this later,” Sherlock decided.
“No, we won’t,” said John, thinking two could play at the snog-away-undesirable-conversations game.
“I need you to keep the gun on Moriarty, as soon as he walks through the door.”
“Well, that shouldn’t be hard,” John remarked.
“It should keep him from killing us while I negotiate with him.”
“Should?” echoed John.
Sherlock ignored him, and also ignored the chirp of his mobile with a text message.
“Is that Mycroft?” Sherlock didn’t need to answer, because it was answered by John’s mobile chirping with a text. John glanced at it. Make him phone me. Mycroft Holmes. “He wants to talk to you.”
“Of course he does,” Sherlock muttered, glancing out the car window at their progress. “He always wants to talk.”
“Sherlock, I don’t like anything about this idea. I think we should kill Moriarty right away and-”
“If we kill Moriarty right away, what happens to us as a result?” asked Sherlock, mildly.
“We get to go home, safe and sound, and live to fight another day.”
“Or Moriarty’s associates take us out immediately.”
“Sherlock-”
“Oh, look, here we are,” said Sherlock, pleasantly, as the cab drew to a stop.
Convenient, thought John. He hoped Sherlock’s luck was going to continue to hold and neither of them died today.
“I don’t have the key anymore,” John told Sherlock, as they walked up to the front door. “Mycroft has it.”
“Who needs keys?” asked Sherlock. “Keys are boring.”
“We’re going to break into this house, and Mycroft’s going to send the police after us.”
“No, he’s not.”
“Why not?”
Sherlock had made quick work of the lock, opening the door easily. John pretended that wasn’t sexy. “Really not Mycroft’s style.” Sherlock was walking swiftly through the house’s dusty hallway.
“I think it sounds exactly like Mycroft’s style,” John protested, following him.
“So it really is an empty house,” Sherlock concluded, reaching the back of the house and peering out the dirty windows at a small crowded alley. He turned abruptly back toward the front of the house, down the cramped hallway they’d strode down. “I assumed everyone had missed something, but it really is an empty house, Professor.”
John, confused, glanced back toward the front of the house, too, and the man with the cigar-Professor Moriarty, John assumed-glided out of one of the rooms off the hallway, still puffing casually on his cigar. John, startled, pulled his gun quickly, leveling it on him.
The man looked vaguely amused. “Really, Dr. Watson? Is that necessary?”
“I wanted to ensure we’d have an opportunity to talk,” responded Sherlock, smoothly.
“And discussions at gunpoint are always so fruitful,” said Moriarty.
“You have done extensive research into that proposition,” Sherlock replied.
Moriarty’s cigar glowed orange for a moment. “Indeed.”
“You’re looking for your brother’s file,” said Sherlock.
“I’m looking for many things, Mr. Holmes.”
“True, but the file is of paramount importance. And I know where it is.”
“So do I.”
“The difference being that I can get it.”
“Really?”
“Not without something in exchange, of course.”
“Do you imagine that we are bargaining with each other now?”
“No, I don’t imagine it at all. I have the file already.”
John was watching Moriarty closely, his gun aimed at his heart, so he could tell that this surprised him. “Your brother-”
“You’ll have done your research. The weakness in my brother’s security is always me.”
“True.” Moriarty walked slowly over to Sherlock, John keeping the gun level on him, his trigger finger ready to take a shot under the slightest provocation.
“Careful, Dr. Watson would love any excuse to kill you,” Sherlock said, mildly, holding his ground as Moriarty approached.
“Which would be a terrible mistake, as you know. For you and for Dr. Watson.” Moriarty drew to a halt only a foot or so away from Sherlock, regarding him with what looked like genuine interest. “You are a great deal of trouble,” he remarked.
“Thank you,” said Sherlock.
“A great deal of trouble to your brother. It is of no surprise to me at all that he has ignored the threat on your life should I die and stationed snipers outside to dispatch me. I am surprised, however, that he doesn’t value his detective inspector’s life more.”
John kept his gun steady but couldn’t help glancing toward the front door. Snipers positioned outside, he thought.
“Mycroft wouldn’t send snipers,” Sherlock denied, impatiently.
“You underestimate how little he values your life. Anyone’s life, apparently.”
John’s thoughts went whirling through his head. If Mycroft had sent snipers…Mycroft was calling Moriarty’s bluff.
“You have one week, Mr. Holmes,” Moriarty continued. “Now, you’ll excuse me if I exit by the back door.”
And if Mycroft was calling his bluff, thought John, if Mycroft was calling his bluff…
It suddenly burst over John exactly how much had been done to him and to Sherlock by the Moriartys. John thought of the suffocating emptiness of the Baker Street flat, of the experiments stalled midway through, of the sheet music going unplayed, of the conversations he’d never gotten to have and the blogs he’d never gotten to write. He thought of things he hadn’t let himself think of in months, thought of standing on a street and watching Sherlock leap off a building, thought of the stillness of his body and the shiny black marble of his gravestone. He thought of the times he’d cried when he hadn’t wanted to cry, and of the times he hadn’t slept when he’d wanted to sleep. He thought of long interminable days in which nothing interesting happened, and of nights when he woke up convinced Sherlock was up and about, in the next room, about to wake him to run an errand for an adventure. He thought of standing in the middle of a busy London street, searching for a cab, and feeling so crushed by loneliness that he couldn’t breathe. He thought of dragging himself to his flat and crumpling onto the sofa, exhausted with missing Sherlock. He thought of the weight of all the things he had never said to him, the weight of all the questions left unasked, and he remembered so vividly the suffocating pressure of all those words, withering inside of him.
And he thought how it had all happened because these men, these Moriarty brothers, had twisted the very best thing in his life until it had become a weapon. Whatever Sherlock’s feelings for John-and John thought they were too complicated to ever be put into words-Sherlock had done everything he could to save him. It had been the Moriartys’ surefire way of beating Sherlock Holmes, and now John saw it was their way of beating all of them, this ridiculous group of people who had all worked so hard to keep each other safe. Moriarty’s power only existed so long as they all placed keeping each other alive above all things.
Mycroft was calling Moriarty’s bluff, John realized, because if Mycroft didn’t call his bluff then the fact of their complex and tangled emotions regarding each other would stay twisted into a weapon that would only hurt them.
John thought of the bleak emptiness of the last eight months of his life. Here, he thought, in this empty house, he was going to take the first step to never being as empty as that again.
John thought all this in a split second, like being abruptly ducked under water. Moriarty was still speaking to Sherlock. “Your brother may wish to see what happens to you should I die. I, however, desire to keep you alive a bit longer,” he was saying, and then he turned his back, clearly about to depart through the back door.
“Moriarty,” said John, evenly, the gun’s weight steady in his hands, and Moriarty half turned toward him, looking politely curious. “You’ve got it the wrong way ’round,” John informed him, and then pulled the trigger.
Next