There may be teardrops to shed (1/3)
BBC Sherlock
Rating: 18 (slash)
Spoilers: For The Reichenbach Fall
A sequel to There May Be Trouble Ahead, Before They Ask Us to Pay the Bill and While We Still Have the Chance.
Betated by the ever wonderful Blooms84.
Summary: Sherlock still isn't sure how he can fit his feelings for John into his other plans.
"I am pleased to think that I shall be able to free society from any further effects of his presence, though I fear it is at a cost which will give pain to my friends, and especially, my dear Watson, to you." - The Final Problem
There are more times than Sherlock would like to admit when he simply doesn't understand humanity. But far more alarming are the times when he doesn't understand John. Why is John worrying about what the papers say about them after the Ricoletti case, telling him to keep a low profile? He stares into the distance as he tries to puzzle it out. As if it matters what some idiots believe about me or him...oh. Of course.
"Jason Donovan," he announces, and John looks up from the papers and says: "What's he done?"
"Sued for libel. No, not a recent case, years ago," Sherlock replies. "It's why they call you a confirmed bachelor. Because you can be sued if you claim someone is gay when they're not. Though you will obviously then appear to be homophobic, so it's hardly an advisable tactic."
"How do you know about Jason Donovan?" John enquires, which is a very John-like question. Sherlock momentarily contemplates claiming that Mycroft had a crush on him as a teenager, but resists the temptation. There's something more interesting to get at here.
"Why do you mind being thought of as gay?" he asks. "You didn't bother to correct them at the Cross Keys Inn."
John looks up at him in exasperation. "Because I would like at some point - in the next decade, say - to get laid," he says. "As in have sex with an actual woman. And while it's hard enough dating someone with the world's most tactless flatmate around, it will be even harder if the entire newspaper readership of the UK believe that we are shagging." He pauses and adds. "It's not just that I'm worried about, honestly. The press like stories about you, so if they don't have any fresh ones to run, they're going to find old stuff about you."
"And?" Sherlock says dismissively.
"They're going to dig out someone who knew you when you were a junkie and run all the sordid details about that."
That's a surprisingly shrewd remark, Sherlock realises, because there are certainly people out there who could reveal rather a lot about his illegal consumption of stimulants.
"And you think that matters?" he asks.
"If it got in the papers, it would upset some of your friends, and probably put off the more strait-laced clients. Look, I'm not trying to get at you about the drugs, I'm glad you've cleaned up. But that's the sort of thing that will happen if you become a celebrity. People will want to hear awful things about you, because it brightens up their boring lives." John starts tidying away the papers into a pile, looking like he wished he could tear them into shreds.
Sherlock is about to point out that people are idiots, but John knows that already. Instead, on an impulse, he says: "The newspaper stories work because they seem plausible, of course. Sometimes they even are partially right. For example, you may be straight, but I am, in fact, gay."
He's prepared for surprise or disbelief, given some of his previous comments on the topic; discomfort is unlikely, but a slightly tasteless joke is not beyond the bounds of possibility.
"Right," John says, not looking up from his tidying. Sherlock waits, but John doesn't add anything.
"Are you listening to what I'm saying?" Sherlock demands.
John looks up. "You're not interested in sex," he says calmly. "If you were interested in sex you'd be interested in blokes, not women, but you're not, so you're not."
He's been doing some research, hasn't he, Sherlock thinks, trying to work out what makes me tick. Read up on asexuality and noticed that some asexual people still identify as straight or gay. He wonders if he should tell John he's wrong about him being asexual - it's not that I can't experience desire, it's that I choose not to - but he's too late, because John has obviously decided that Sherlock needs reassuring.
"It really doesn't worry me," John says hastily. "I've read so many tabloid newspapers this morning, I'm not sure I feel like sex ever again. Or any further contact with human beings. Well, at least not anyone who reads this trash. Do we have to keep the hard copy of all of these? I'm getting worried that the pile will collapse on top of me, and I'll be literally suffocated by them."
Sherlock wonders if outing yourself ought to produce a more interested reaction, but on the other hand, the thought of how you could kill a person with a pile of newsprint is really more intriguing. Newspapers in bulk might indeed be deadly. As opposed to a single issue, with which you really can't do any serious harm to anybody.
Just over six weeks later, Kitty Riley shows him how wrong he is about that.
***
John's sometimes accused Sherlock of having a problem with women, but that's inaccurate. Sherlock has a problem with most of John's girlfriends, although he can hardly tell John that any boyfriends he turned up with would probably get an even worse reception. He also has a problem with the incompetent. The fact that counsel for the prosecution at Moriarty's trial is black and female is irrelevant; as the reaction of the old, white, male, upper class judge to him shows, Sherlock is an equal opportunity irritant.
The complication with many women - and some men - is that they are attracted to Sherlock, and hope for some kind of favourable response from him to this fact. He's aware that he's repeatedly upset Molly Hooper in that way. So it's a relief to realise that Kitty Riley isn't interested in his body, that the cleavage on display is just the weapon of an unscrupulous woman. An unscrupulous and not very bright woman: she thinks he's sleeping with John and yet he might be interested in her? That he would want anything to do with her, in bed or out of it? Sherlock dismisses Ms Riley as a minor problem, and he winces later to realise how he missed the set-up of the three card trick.
***
It seems straightforward, at first. Three problems: Moriarty and his code, Sally Donovan and the Bruhl kidnapping, Kitty Riley and her scoop. The latter two elements are clearly distractions, to prevent him focusing on Moriarty. It's only far too late that Sherlock realises they're key to Moriarty's plan. Jim knows Sherlock doesn't fear dying. But if he can no longer be a detective, what is there left in Sherlock's life?
What's impressive is how Moriarty uses Sherlock's own genius against him. Makes the Bruhl case just easy enough for him to solve that it looks like a trick. Well, at least to DS Donovan's sceptical eyes.
Sally Donovan isn't incompetent, or at least not by the dismally low standards of the Met. She's determined, tough, smart; she ought to have been promoted to Inspector ahead of Dimmock. But she's also prone to the occasional horrendous error of judgement. She makes mistakes and then she's too pigheaded to back down, admit she's wrong. Still hanging round with Anderson, who, from the state of his shoes, is clearly never going to leave his wife. And Sally misunderstands Claudette Bruhl's screams and can't work out the obvious conclusion: that Moriarty is using a double of Sherlock.
Anderson, on his own, would just bitch about Sherlock being a fraud; Sally takes action, won't let the matter go. Not even to protect Lestrade; not when there are children involved. Sherlock's been relying on Lestrade to keep Scotland Yard happy, but this time it doesn't work. And John's right: there are a lot of police officers Sherlock's pissed off over the years. It won't be easy getting things back to normal after this. Even Greg might not forgive him for stealing the gun and running off. It's a good job John still trusts him.
***
John trusts him in all sorts of ways. It doesn't worry him, for example, that he ends up handcuffed to a gay man, though that would surely panic many straight men. Or at least, what worries John isn't that Sherlock might try and get into his underwear, it's that Sherlock might manage to knock him unconscious on some railings by mistake.
Sherlock's never realised quite how attached he is to John till now. He is acutely conscious of every move, every breath John takes, how John has to lengthen his stride uncomfortably to keep up with Sherlock, bobbing after him like a cork on a string. But also how John follows him, doesn't try to fight him or resist him, even when Sherlock pulls them in front of an on-coming bus. John doesn't panic when a man is shot dead right next to him, and he doesn't protest about breaking into Kitty Riley's flat. He doesn't even yell at Sherlock afterwards, when Sherlock says he needs to do things on his own.
Rich Brook's been so clever, Sherlock thinks, as he starts the long walk to Barts - less risky than taking a taxi, since Moriarty obviously has lots of cab driver contacts. Jim's set out to destroy trust in him, and he's done it very carefully. Mycroft and he aren't talking after the Irene Adler fiasco, so the run of government cases will now dry up. Scotland Yard aren't going to be asking for his help any time soon, and private clients won't come to a man who's alleged to be a fraud...
He'd underestimated Kitty Riley, hadn't he? She simply doesn't care that her story doesn't hold up if you examine it closely. How can Sherlock have faked the Peter Ricoletti case, for example? The man's been on Interpol's wanted list since Sherlock was six. But, like the ink stains on her skin, she focuses on first impressions, however superficial. It's going to take some hard work to redeem his reputation when people are so gullible.
Fortunately, he's not afraid of hard work. And if he can just get hold of the computer code, his problems will be over, he knows that. Mycroft will probably offer him a knighthood again, as a start. So it's time to start using Moriarty's own plan against him. Moriarty wants Sherlock dead and that suits him just fine. The obvious way to fight a man who supposedly doesn't exist is not to exist himself. To fake his own death. That will immediately get the police, and the assassins and the newspapers off his tail. And he knows just the person who can help him do that.
Just the woman. Something's changed in Molly, he saw that at the lab when they were running the analysis of the residues. She's not enchanted by him anymore; he's no longer an idol to her, even one with feet of clay. He's a human being and she cares about him. Because that's what Molly does: care about people, the living and the dead. She'll help Sherlock to do this and she won't expect his love in return. She already knows, of course, that it's John he loves. It seems, sometimes, that he was the last person to realise that fact.
***
While Molly goes off to get the other body ready, the man who's going to hit the pavement, Sherlock sits in the lab at Barts and checks over the remaining problems. The biggest one, as ever, is John. It's going to hurt him when Sherlock dies, but there's no alternative. Faking two deaths is more than twice as hard as faking one. And if they did succeed it would be bound to look like a suicide pact between doomed lovers, which John would doubtless find awkward. More than that, John wouldn't be good at being dead. He has friends, responsibilities he wouldn't want to abandon. He'd find a life in hiding, watching his every word, impossible to maintain: he'd slip up, betray them both. John can't die with him and Sherlock can't let him know he's not dead. This has to be done right or not done at all.
Perhaps there's still a way to avoid it, though. If he can just work out where the computer code is in 221B, he might somehow be able to get John in there to retrieve it. After all, breaking into a building watched by the police and ringed by assassins sounds just like the sort of thing to cheer John up. Where is John, anyhow? Oh, of course, Sherlock told him a few hours ago he needed to be on his own. One of these days, he's going to have to stop pushing John away. And it was a particularly stupid thing to do when he may just have wandered off and got himself arrested. He hastily switches his phone back on and checks his messages.
There is a series of texts from Lestrade - Greg. Stripped of the copious swearwords they have a simple, stark message. I can't help you or John at the moment. Take care. And then after that, thank God, a text from John. Sent just over an hour ago. MD says 221B under guard but main London search not till morning to save on overtime! J.
MD? It takes a certain amount of processing to work out that John must have contacted DI Dimmock - Mark? Michael? Murgatroyd? - who is obviously still willing to give Sherlock the benefit of the doubt. A risk, but enterprising of John. And then the phone beeps and there's a second message from John:
I'm here to be used, Sherlock. If you need me. J
How had he thought he could manage this without John? How is he possibly going to work out where the code is unless he has someone to bounce ideas off, his own conductor of light? He sends off a rapid text, and starts to calculate how long it might take John to get to Barts.
***
Forty-five minutes later John comes striding into the lab, saying "Got your message", the way he always does. The way he'd said it to Sherlock almost the first time they'd met, when Sherlock had texted him that the Pink Lady case might be dangerous.
Oh, of course, that's the reason for the echo in both his mind and John's. John has worked out about Rich Brook's informant, been to the Diogenes Club and from the way he's holding his hand, has somehow resisted the temptation to hit Mycroft. Eighteen months ago, Sherlock had told John that Mycroft was the most dangerous man he'd ever meet. Well, he'd been wrong about that, hadn't he? Sherlock bounces his ball one more time and starts explaining about the computer code.
Five minutes later, John taps his fingers and everything in Sherlock's mind flows together. That's where the code lurks, inside his own memory. And therefore also in Moriarty's. He texts Moriarty then, quickly, before his own fingers can betray him. Before he finds some reason why he should stay with John instead of going to meet his enemy.
Because, of course, he's still going to have to die. He and Moriarty both are. It's the only certain way to remove Moriarty's copy of the computer code. And then, well, it's strange that he'll still have to die even though he's victorious, but he can't destroy Moriarty's empire efficiently if he's in custody for killing Rich Brook. If he just removes the head of the organisation, it will simply reconfigure itself within a few months. He has to be thorough this time, cut out the whole of the cancer. Which means that his own presumed death still remains the most effective short-term tactic.
The hard bit now is John. He looks over to where John's sitting at a bench, staring at some test-tubes, trying not to distract Sherlock while he's thinking. John can't be around for the meeting with Moriarty or he'll almost certainly end up as a hostage, a bargaining chip. Somehow Sherlock has to push him away yet again, get him somewhere safe.
It's not just that. At some point fairly soon, John is going to suggest they leave Barts, go undercover somewhere. He's going to start making plans for them if Sherlock hasn't announced any himself. He needs to distract John, stop him worrying about what to do next. He's going to have lie to John later to get him out of the way, so he also needs to give him something truthful now, something to reassure him of his good faith. And he wants...It'll be their last meeting for some time - months, maybe. He wants to show John something of what he feels, without betraying what's going to come.
And suddenly he knows what to do, how to make it work for both of them. He goes over to John and says:
"You know what the newspaper article didn't talk about? What Rich Brook didn't mention?"
"What?" says John, looking up in surprise.
"Anything about my sexuality. They're not interested in that anymore, they've got bigger issues to talk about. So I think we should have sex right now."
Part 2
Rating: 18 (slash)
Spoilers: For The Reichenbach Fall
A sequel to There May Be Trouble Ahead, Before They Ask Us to Pay the Bill and While We Still Have the Chance.
Betated by the ever wonderful Blooms84.
Summary: Sherlock still isn't sure how he can fit his feelings for John into his other plans.
"I am pleased to think that I shall be able to free society from any further effects of his presence, though I fear it is at a cost which will give pain to my friends, and especially, my dear Watson, to you." - The Final Problem
There are more times than Sherlock would like to admit when he simply doesn't understand humanity. But far more alarming are the times when he doesn't understand John. Why is John worrying about what the papers say about them after the Ricoletti case, telling him to keep a low profile? He stares into the distance as he tries to puzzle it out. As if it matters what some idiots believe about me or him...oh. Of course.
"Jason Donovan," he announces, and John looks up from the papers and says: "What's he done?"
"Sued for libel. No, not a recent case, years ago," Sherlock replies. "It's why they call you a confirmed bachelor. Because you can be sued if you claim someone is gay when they're not. Though you will obviously then appear to be homophobic, so it's hardly an advisable tactic."
"How do you know about Jason Donovan?" John enquires, which is a very John-like question. Sherlock momentarily contemplates claiming that Mycroft had a crush on him as a teenager, but resists the temptation. There's something more interesting to get at here.
"Why do you mind being thought of as gay?" he asks. "You didn't bother to correct them at the Cross Keys Inn."
John looks up at him in exasperation. "Because I would like at some point - in the next decade, say - to get laid," he says. "As in have sex with an actual woman. And while it's hard enough dating someone with the world's most tactless flatmate around, it will be even harder if the entire newspaper readership of the UK believe that we are shagging." He pauses and adds. "It's not just that I'm worried about, honestly. The press like stories about you, so if they don't have any fresh ones to run, they're going to find old stuff about you."
"And?" Sherlock says dismissively.
"They're going to dig out someone who knew you when you were a junkie and run all the sordid details about that."
That's a surprisingly shrewd remark, Sherlock realises, because there are certainly people out there who could reveal rather a lot about his illegal consumption of stimulants.
"And you think that matters?" he asks.
"If it got in the papers, it would upset some of your friends, and probably put off the more strait-laced clients. Look, I'm not trying to get at you about the drugs, I'm glad you've cleaned up. But that's the sort of thing that will happen if you become a celebrity. People will want to hear awful things about you, because it brightens up their boring lives." John starts tidying away the papers into a pile, looking like he wished he could tear them into shreds.
Sherlock is about to point out that people are idiots, but John knows that already. Instead, on an impulse, he says: "The newspaper stories work because they seem plausible, of course. Sometimes they even are partially right. For example, you may be straight, but I am, in fact, gay."
He's prepared for surprise or disbelief, given some of his previous comments on the topic; discomfort is unlikely, but a slightly tasteless joke is not beyond the bounds of possibility.
"Right," John says, not looking up from his tidying. Sherlock waits, but John doesn't add anything.
"Are you listening to what I'm saying?" Sherlock demands.
John looks up. "You're not interested in sex," he says calmly. "If you were interested in sex you'd be interested in blokes, not women, but you're not, so you're not."
He's been doing some research, hasn't he, Sherlock thinks, trying to work out what makes me tick. Read up on asexuality and noticed that some asexual people still identify as straight or gay. He wonders if he should tell John he's wrong about him being asexual - it's not that I can't experience desire, it's that I choose not to - but he's too late, because John has obviously decided that Sherlock needs reassuring.
"It really doesn't worry me," John says hastily. "I've read so many tabloid newspapers this morning, I'm not sure I feel like sex ever again. Or any further contact with human beings. Well, at least not anyone who reads this trash. Do we have to keep the hard copy of all of these? I'm getting worried that the pile will collapse on top of me, and I'll be literally suffocated by them."
Sherlock wonders if outing yourself ought to produce a more interested reaction, but on the other hand, the thought of how you could kill a person with a pile of newsprint is really more intriguing. Newspapers in bulk might indeed be deadly. As opposed to a single issue, with which you really can't do any serious harm to anybody.
Just over six weeks later, Kitty Riley shows him how wrong he is about that.
***
John's sometimes accused Sherlock of having a problem with women, but that's inaccurate. Sherlock has a problem with most of John's girlfriends, although he can hardly tell John that any boyfriends he turned up with would probably get an even worse reception. He also has a problem with the incompetent. The fact that counsel for the prosecution at Moriarty's trial is black and female is irrelevant; as the reaction of the old, white, male, upper class judge to him shows, Sherlock is an equal opportunity irritant.
The complication with many women - and some men - is that they are attracted to Sherlock, and hope for some kind of favourable response from him to this fact. He's aware that he's repeatedly upset Molly Hooper in that way. So it's a relief to realise that Kitty Riley isn't interested in his body, that the cleavage on display is just the weapon of an unscrupulous woman. An unscrupulous and not very bright woman: she thinks he's sleeping with John and yet he might be interested in her? That he would want anything to do with her, in bed or out of it? Sherlock dismisses Ms Riley as a minor problem, and he winces later to realise how he missed the set-up of the three card trick.
***
It seems straightforward, at first. Three problems: Moriarty and his code, Sally Donovan and the Bruhl kidnapping, Kitty Riley and her scoop. The latter two elements are clearly distractions, to prevent him focusing on Moriarty. It's only far too late that Sherlock realises they're key to Moriarty's plan. Jim knows Sherlock doesn't fear dying. But if he can no longer be a detective, what is there left in Sherlock's life?
What's impressive is how Moriarty uses Sherlock's own genius against him. Makes the Bruhl case just easy enough for him to solve that it looks like a trick. Well, at least to DS Donovan's sceptical eyes.
Sally Donovan isn't incompetent, or at least not by the dismally low standards of the Met. She's determined, tough, smart; she ought to have been promoted to Inspector ahead of Dimmock. But she's also prone to the occasional horrendous error of judgement. She makes mistakes and then she's too pigheaded to back down, admit she's wrong. Still hanging round with Anderson, who, from the state of his shoes, is clearly never going to leave his wife. And Sally misunderstands Claudette Bruhl's screams and can't work out the obvious conclusion: that Moriarty is using a double of Sherlock.
Anderson, on his own, would just bitch about Sherlock being a fraud; Sally takes action, won't let the matter go. Not even to protect Lestrade; not when there are children involved. Sherlock's been relying on Lestrade to keep Scotland Yard happy, but this time it doesn't work. And John's right: there are a lot of police officers Sherlock's pissed off over the years. It won't be easy getting things back to normal after this. Even Greg might not forgive him for stealing the gun and running off. It's a good job John still trusts him.
***
John trusts him in all sorts of ways. It doesn't worry him, for example, that he ends up handcuffed to a gay man, though that would surely panic many straight men. Or at least, what worries John isn't that Sherlock might try and get into his underwear, it's that Sherlock might manage to knock him unconscious on some railings by mistake.
Sherlock's never realised quite how attached he is to John till now. He is acutely conscious of every move, every breath John takes, how John has to lengthen his stride uncomfortably to keep up with Sherlock, bobbing after him like a cork on a string. But also how John follows him, doesn't try to fight him or resist him, even when Sherlock pulls them in front of an on-coming bus. John doesn't panic when a man is shot dead right next to him, and he doesn't protest about breaking into Kitty Riley's flat. He doesn't even yell at Sherlock afterwards, when Sherlock says he needs to do things on his own.
Rich Brook's been so clever, Sherlock thinks, as he starts the long walk to Barts - less risky than taking a taxi, since Moriarty obviously has lots of cab driver contacts. Jim's set out to destroy trust in him, and he's done it very carefully. Mycroft and he aren't talking after the Irene Adler fiasco, so the run of government cases will now dry up. Scotland Yard aren't going to be asking for his help any time soon, and private clients won't come to a man who's alleged to be a fraud...
He'd underestimated Kitty Riley, hadn't he? She simply doesn't care that her story doesn't hold up if you examine it closely. How can Sherlock have faked the Peter Ricoletti case, for example? The man's been on Interpol's wanted list since Sherlock was six. But, like the ink stains on her skin, she focuses on first impressions, however superficial. It's going to take some hard work to redeem his reputation when people are so gullible.
Fortunately, he's not afraid of hard work. And if he can just get hold of the computer code, his problems will be over, he knows that. Mycroft will probably offer him a knighthood again, as a start. So it's time to start using Moriarty's own plan against him. Moriarty wants Sherlock dead and that suits him just fine. The obvious way to fight a man who supposedly doesn't exist is not to exist himself. To fake his own death. That will immediately get the police, and the assassins and the newspapers off his tail. And he knows just the person who can help him do that.
Just the woman. Something's changed in Molly, he saw that at the lab when they were running the analysis of the residues. She's not enchanted by him anymore; he's no longer an idol to her, even one with feet of clay. He's a human being and she cares about him. Because that's what Molly does: care about people, the living and the dead. She'll help Sherlock to do this and she won't expect his love in return. She already knows, of course, that it's John he loves. It seems, sometimes, that he was the last person to realise that fact.
***
While Molly goes off to get the other body ready, the man who's going to hit the pavement, Sherlock sits in the lab at Barts and checks over the remaining problems. The biggest one, as ever, is John. It's going to hurt him when Sherlock dies, but there's no alternative. Faking two deaths is more than twice as hard as faking one. And if they did succeed it would be bound to look like a suicide pact between doomed lovers, which John would doubtless find awkward. More than that, John wouldn't be good at being dead. He has friends, responsibilities he wouldn't want to abandon. He'd find a life in hiding, watching his every word, impossible to maintain: he'd slip up, betray them both. John can't die with him and Sherlock can't let him know he's not dead. This has to be done right or not done at all.
Perhaps there's still a way to avoid it, though. If he can just work out where the computer code is in 221B, he might somehow be able to get John in there to retrieve it. After all, breaking into a building watched by the police and ringed by assassins sounds just like the sort of thing to cheer John up. Where is John, anyhow? Oh, of course, Sherlock told him a few hours ago he needed to be on his own. One of these days, he's going to have to stop pushing John away. And it was a particularly stupid thing to do when he may just have wandered off and got himself arrested. He hastily switches his phone back on and checks his messages.
There is a series of texts from Lestrade - Greg. Stripped of the copious swearwords they have a simple, stark message. I can't help you or John at the moment. Take care. And then after that, thank God, a text from John. Sent just over an hour ago. MD says 221B under guard but main London search not till morning to save on overtime! J.
MD? It takes a certain amount of processing to work out that John must have contacted DI Dimmock - Mark? Michael? Murgatroyd? - who is obviously still willing to give Sherlock the benefit of the doubt. A risk, but enterprising of John. And then the phone beeps and there's a second message from John:
I'm here to be used, Sherlock. If you need me. J
How had he thought he could manage this without John? How is he possibly going to work out where the code is unless he has someone to bounce ideas off, his own conductor of light? He sends off a rapid text, and starts to calculate how long it might take John to get to Barts.
***
Forty-five minutes later John comes striding into the lab, saying "Got your message", the way he always does. The way he'd said it to Sherlock almost the first time they'd met, when Sherlock had texted him that the Pink Lady case might be dangerous.
Oh, of course, that's the reason for the echo in both his mind and John's. John has worked out about Rich Brook's informant, been to the Diogenes Club and from the way he's holding his hand, has somehow resisted the temptation to hit Mycroft. Eighteen months ago, Sherlock had told John that Mycroft was the most dangerous man he'd ever meet. Well, he'd been wrong about that, hadn't he? Sherlock bounces his ball one more time and starts explaining about the computer code.
Five minutes later, John taps his fingers and everything in Sherlock's mind flows together. That's where the code lurks, inside his own memory. And therefore also in Moriarty's. He texts Moriarty then, quickly, before his own fingers can betray him. Before he finds some reason why he should stay with John instead of going to meet his enemy.
Because, of course, he's still going to have to die. He and Moriarty both are. It's the only certain way to remove Moriarty's copy of the computer code. And then, well, it's strange that he'll still have to die even though he's victorious, but he can't destroy Moriarty's empire efficiently if he's in custody for killing Rich Brook. If he just removes the head of the organisation, it will simply reconfigure itself within a few months. He has to be thorough this time, cut out the whole of the cancer. Which means that his own presumed death still remains the most effective short-term tactic.
The hard bit now is John. He looks over to where John's sitting at a bench, staring at some test-tubes, trying not to distract Sherlock while he's thinking. John can't be around for the meeting with Moriarty or he'll almost certainly end up as a hostage, a bargaining chip. Somehow Sherlock has to push him away yet again, get him somewhere safe.
It's not just that. At some point fairly soon, John is going to suggest they leave Barts, go undercover somewhere. He's going to start making plans for them if Sherlock hasn't announced any himself. He needs to distract John, stop him worrying about what to do next. He's going to have lie to John later to get him out of the way, so he also needs to give him something truthful now, something to reassure him of his good faith. And he wants...It'll be their last meeting for some time - months, maybe. He wants to show John something of what he feels, without betraying what's going to come.
And suddenly he knows what to do, how to make it work for both of them. He goes over to John and says:
"You know what the newspaper article didn't talk about? What Rich Brook didn't mention?"
"What?" says John, looking up in surprise.
"Anything about my sexuality. They're not interested in that anymore, they've got bigger issues to talk about. So I think we should have sex right now."
Part 2