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“Ethics don’t trouble you,” Beatrice Holmes had said, shortly before she’d kissed him, shoved him back onto the mattress and fucked him. “Not like Sherlock.”
“Ethics will only slow you down,” he’d replied. He’d bed her willingly. Eagerly. Done his best to ignore the Sherlock-shaped weight on his chest, even then.
Ethics will only slow you down.
James Moriarty wasn’t sure when the weight had started - small, pebble-like, clattering around in his ribcage. It had a posh voice and scoffed a lot, objected to his proclivity to punching as a means of problem solving. It had been easier to ignore back then.
The pebble had grown in mass, in presence, over the last few months. Where it used to rattle around freely, now it sat lodged firmly in his breastbone and roughly the size of a small boulder. It was preoccupied with rules and desperate for its brother’s approval, its mother’s, its father’s, stubbornly trusting said family members to the point of blindness.
The weight made him stop and think, where before James would just act. People were pawns, variables to move in order to get the desired results. But now here he was, considering the weight of the boulder’s emotions, of the best ways to present facts to him. It.
James wasn’t used to being burdened by such considerations.
Authority was meant to be defied and subverted, whether it was the Oxford academic elite or colonizing English bastards. And yet here he was, suddenly worrying about a family that wasn’t his and a lad that wasn’t his.
Ethics will only slow you down.
James Moriarty knows this. The weight in his chest makes him cautious, makes him hesitate when he should be seizing opportunities without a second thought.
What would his own family say, if they could see him pausing like this, prioritizing some English bloke’s feelings?
James had resolved to cast off the dead weight after that night at the campsite.
It’s why he scoured for the missing half of Malik’s equation in the mine, grabbed it without a second thought, the usual weight in his chest replaced with adrenaline. (He’d ignored any twinges of shame and embarrassment, insisted they weren’t there, just like that non-existent boulder weighing down his breastbone).
It’s why he’s here now, in this Constantinople cafe, meeting Beatrice Holmes with a kiss on the cheek, a hand on her waist, and a “hello, you” like a coy lover.
He can charm and flirt with the best of them when there isn’t a posh snort of disapproval in his ear or a twinge of guilt in his chest, because lately there’s only one person he wants to direct his charm towards.
“I think we could work well together, you and me,” he tells Beatrice Holmes in the Constantinople cafe. And he means it.
She has the same sharp brows. A similarly calculating mind. An eye for opportunity to exploit. All the same skill, same potential, that others were content to squander on amateur countryside sleuthing.
“It is far safer to be feared than loved,” James Moriarty had said that night, shortly before she’d kissed him, shoved him back onto the mattress and fucked him.
Beatrice Holmes was the safer option.
He’d made up his mind, on the hill near Ashraf. Again when he’d searched the mine, tucked the equation into his pocket. And again when he’d arranged this meeting and told Beatrice Holmes “I think we could work well together, you and me”.
He was doing so well, ignoring the weight of ethics, of guilt, of him -
“Were you followed?” he asks Beatrice now, quick and quiet.
“No, I was careful.” Beatrice sounds a touch offended, but he doesn’t care.
“Okay,” James’s pulse quickens as he stares past her shoulder. “Sherlock’s here.”
Not a manifestation of mind palace guilt. Sherlock is here, ambling about the cafe courtyard, as if hoping to spot a familiar face.
James rubs the boulder lodged in his chest, awareness of it returning with bone-crushing force. He cannot see her.
“Out the back,” he tells Beatrice quickly, and she’s already halfway up, moving toward the door. Clever girl.
“I’ll see you tonight,” his voice is low, words quick.
“Yes,” she breathes. Then she’s gone.
And then all the distractions are gone, and James Moriarty’s gaze is stuck on Sherlock, where it’s stayed from the second he first spotted him.
Sherlock is still bumbling around the courtyard in a confounding defiance of his usually impressive powers of observation. James raises his hand to help.
When Sherlock finally spots him, he swears he feels the warmth of Sherlock’s smile even tucked far away in his shady alcove.
James watches Sherlock make his way over, navigating past tables and waiters with tea. He rubs at the pressure in his chest again, wills his heartrate to steady. It’s just the thrill of being almost-caught, he tells himself. The thrill of the con.
It is not, he insists, because of Sherlock’s grin, or how relieved he looks to see James, or the little half-smile he does when he reaches the table and says, “Thought I’d find you here”.
“Hmm,” James replies, buying himself time to recover, “you thought right”. Sherlock’s smile cracks open, a little brighter. James’s cheeks warm despite himself.
“Needed to get away from the family,” Sherlock says, going to sit across from him.
“Oh, they’ll fuck you up,” James quips, leaning back in his chair.
Their next sentences crash together, the same joke at Sherlock’s family’s expense, and they chuckle. For a moment, things feel warm, like before. Before that hillside conversation near Ashraf ruined everything. Not that Sherlock knows.
James flags a waiter for whiskies, hoping to keep this warmth, even if it’s short-lived now. When he isn’t burdened by Sherlock’s morals, he’s treated to this pleasant glow, one that lasts longer than the rush from flirting with a lass or charming her into bed.
He pointedly shoves those thoughts away.
Beatrice Holmes was the safer option.
Sherlock stares at him from across the little table now, strangely solemn.
“Do you regret losing your scholarship at Oxford?”
The question catches James off guard, but he hides it, leaning forward with a small smirk. Pauses.
“Do I regret meeting you,” James asks, “the porter with the wastepaper basket?”
Not at first, he wants to say. I thought we were perfect for each other. Minds in sync. I thought I wasn’t alone. But we’re not the same, are we?
“Scout,” Sherlock corrects, pulling him back into the present. “Never made it to the gilded heights of porter.”
If he wants lighthearted technicalities, James can match him. They’ve always been well-matched. Until recently.
“You know,” James quips, “had you not led me astray - “
Sherlock interrupts with mock outrage. “I led you astray?”
“ - I would’ve undoubtedly finished top of my class,” James finishes, smirk returning.
“Undoubtedly,” Sherlock bleeds sarcasm. James can feel it - they’re off to the races, back to the banter of old times, like before. The rapid-fire volleying of quick quips, just the two of them, because there isn’t anyone else fast enough to keep up.
“And gone on to have a stellar career in government,” James adds for good measure.
“Unstoppable, I would have said,” Sherlock replies.
“Probably would’ve ended up Foreign Secretary.”
“Don’t put blinkers on your ambition, James,” Sherlock fires back. “I would have said Prime Minister at the very least.” It’s exhilarating, like racing downhill on a bicycle. James loves the thrill. He grins at Sherlock, all teeth, reveling in how it feels when it’s just them, sharp and quick like no one else is.
“Yes, I could be the master puppeteer, pulling all the strings, huh?” James’s smile is wide and lazy. “Well, if you insist.”
Sherlock smiles at this, looks down and then leans back in his seat. When his eyes meet James’s again, it’s with a steady gaze. Waiting.
Does he want a genuine answer to his question?
James can give him one.
“No. I have no regrets.” Sherlock looks up at him through dark browns, working very hard to keep his expression neutral. His gaze remains fixed on James, intent. Electric. Sherlock feels it too. He has to.
“In fact…,” James continues, and Sherlock’s head snaps up, stare intensifying. Mere days ago, James was dying for a conversation like this one. A chance to confess. To unburden. To see if Sherlock Holmes and James Moriarty were alike in all the ways that mattered. He opens his mouth to continue, Sherlock hanging on his every word.
But as James leans forward to answer, he feels the stolen equation crinkle in his pocket. He’s reminded of the opportunities it will afford him and another Holmes. The opportunities it could have afforded them, if Sherlock were willing to see his side.
Ethics will only slow you down.
“I feel as though I should thank you, Sherlock Holmes,” James says instead, brightly (and perhaps a little smug), “for saving me from a life of sheer boredom”.
He raises his whiskey glass. He’s steering the conversation away from genuine confessions, back to quick-witted joviality, and tries to ignore the flash of disappointment in Sherlock’s eyes. Tries to ignore the boulder in his breastbone with pleading eyebrows asking him to confess to the way he feels about Holmes, about the equation, everything. He already tried confessing once. Look where that got him.
He swallows the words.
There is an equation in his pocket. He does not want to be slowed down by sad eyebrows or ethics or otherwise.
“Well, to that,” Sherlock says slowly, raising his own glass, “I would say…you are most welcome”.
Glasses clink. They knock back their drinks, though Sherlock’s gaze never leaves James’s, as though trying to burrow into his soul and learn his secrets.
James holds Sherlock’s gaze, but gives nothing away. He leans back into his chair with a closed-mouth smile, the crinkle of paper in his pocket reminding him that there’s a world out there flush with opportunity, so long as he isn’t weighed down by one Sherlock Holmes.
The same Sherlock Holmes currently hunching forward in his chair, still holding eye contact, his face stained with the shadow of…disappointment?
“What?” James asks with a scoffing smile, trying to fight the sudden shift in Sherlock’s demeanor.
Sherlock sighs. “I know you have it.” He speaks slowly. “James.”
James’s heart stops. Stutters back to life, all behind a neutral expression. He cocks his head, trying to play it cool. “Don’t be going all cryptic on me now.”
Is this how Sherlock wants to have this conversation? Not a blunt confession, or gingerly dancing around the subject, around this thing that’s been simmering between them for ages now? Sherlock Holmes is opting for an accusation?
Well, that’s not how James would have gone about things (Lord knows he already tried, and failed rather spectacularly).
If this is how Sherlock wants to confront things, the least he can do is say it.
I know you have it, James. The homosexual condition. Or something equally ridiculous and stuffy.
James braces himself. Has his retorts prepared, ready to point out that he’s fucked plenty of women and liked it. (He won’t even mention that he fucked Holmes’s sister, because he’s a gentleman.) It’s just that, he thinks, he’d also rather like fucking Sherlock. He thinks he’d rather like kissing his smart mouth and those expressive eyebrows and those soft, un-calloused hands that throw weak punches.
James is willing to suffer through this painfully awkward conversations if it means Sherlock will finally admit that he feels it too, that he’s felt this thing between them all this time and just panicked before, back on the hillside outside Ashraf -
“The remainder of Malik’s equation,” Sherlock says instead, stern, and more than a little condescending. “I know you have it.” He’s got that doe-eyed look beneath those dark brows James was just thinking about kissing again, looking equal parts angry and disappointed.
Well, that wasn’t what James had been expecting at all. Maybe the English lad could land a blow after all.
James stares at Sherlock, the echo of his last smile still trapped on his face.
After everything they’ve been through, this fucker is still focused on destroyeing the equation. Is still focused on doing the “right thing”.
And here James had convinced himself that Mr. Ethics would confess to feeling -
Something snaps inside of him.
James swallows his shame. Breathes deeply.
“You’re right,” James says with a friendly smile. “Of course you’re right.” He pretends everything is fine, even as the boulder in his chest becomes unbearably heavy, crushing his lungs, stopping his breath - he forces himself to keep talking. “Yes, you know I took it. And you know why I took it.”
Sherlock breathes sharply, turns his head with some skepticism, still wanting to trust James despite himself. Loyal to a fault.
And so James tells Sherlock what he wants to hear.
“I took it for us,” James says. Which was true. But then he lies. “If that weapon ever rises out of the ashes, then we have the means to defeat it. Together.”
There, he thinks. A fairytale for the lad who believes in justice and goodness, despite it all.
He hates the kernel of truth buried in there. He’d wanted the equation for both of them, a meal ticket to money and freedom and influence. Together.
James Moriarty had tried his best to confide in Sherlock that night, in the setting sun, back on the hill outside Ashraf.
The boulder in his breastbone had made him nervous. Hesitant. Hopeful. He had gathered his courage, done his best to lay all his cards out on the table.
“What’s next for you, Sherlock?” he had asked on the hill outside Ashraf, as Sherlock untacked his horse and the others set up camp in the distance. He’d felt nervous. He’d found a conversational opening anyway.
Sherlock had cocked his head, fiddling with the saddlebags.“Haven’t really thought that far ahead,” he’d replied, more insufferably posh than usual. “Don’t rightly know. You?”
There was the opening James had hoped for. His reply had been equally posh-sounding.
“I assume I’m coming home with you.”
Intentionally light, teasing, used humor to deflect the hope in his words. Have you thought about a future with me?
He’d caught the glint of Sherlock’s smile in the setting sun. James was nervous, but barreled ahead, decided he should just hint at his whole plan all at once. Lay all his cards on the table.
“I was thinking the British government would pay a fair old whack for that weapon of your father’s.” James used the same light tone as before, testing.
But Sherlock’s face had clouded as he turned back to his saddlebags. “I won’t be part of anything that earns my father a single penny, James.”
“Not him, Sherlock,” James had said quietly. “Us.”
“Us?”
Whatever James felt before was nothing, nothing compared to the electric jolt of hearing Sherlock repeat it back. He felt hopeful. Desperate with it.
“What if we don’t destroy it,” James continued, rising to stand behind Sherlock. Close. Closer than usual. “And we sell it back to Her Majesty’s government?”
He’d let the offer hang there. Sherlock turned to look at him, just a breath between them. James did his best to look earnest, open. No jokes, no banter. Laying all his cards on the table.
“It would be freedom for us, Sherlock. We could do what we want.”
Be who we want, he’d wanted to say, but panicked and pivoted at the first glimmer of suspicion in Sherlock’s eyes. Of mistrust.
James had been sure, so goddamn sure, after he’d seen that failed kiss on the balcony between Sherlock and Shou’an.
He’d heard Sherlock’s confusion, heard Sherlock insist he wanted to feel however he was “supposed to” feel. James had taken it as a sign. If Sherlock didn’t feel how he was supposed to with her, perhaps…he might with James?
James was observant. He’d seen that failed kiss on the balcony. He’d clocked the interaction in the Parisian cabaret. When that male dancer had caught Sherlock’s arm, called him le visage d'un ange and leaned in for a kiss.
James had seen Sherlock lean in too, before catching himself and distracting the other man with a drink.
The Parisian cabaret. The failed kiss in Constantinople. Every interaction between them since the very beginning, since Oxford. It was all evidence. Fact.
James Moriarty had felt sure, on the hill near Ashraf, that this was the moment to lay all his cards on the table.
To confess the future he wanted for them. Together.
The profit from selling the equation would give them freedom and security. They could live however they wanted, together. Be untouchable.
But suspicion had glimmered in Sherlock’s eyes. Instead of gratitude. Instead of recognition.
He wasn’t sure why his plan was failing. He tried swallowing the rising panic.
It appeared James Moriarty had miscalculated. Misread every interaction between them since the very beginning. Had merely seen what he’d wanted to see.
So he pivoted, on the hillside. Perhaps Sherlock was nervous, and James could reassure him it was safe to be transparent here, outside the campsite.
“They’d build great statues of us,” James had joked, before adding, “No one could stand in our way”. Another clue, a breadcrumb of what he wanted to offer Sherlock.
But Sherlock just stared at James.
Nudged his hat up, and redoubled his silent stare. Horrified. Disgusted.
It felt like a slap in the face, on the hillside.
Sherlock’s grave look of horror and affront at James’s suggestion - his suggestion of a future together - lodged in James’s chest, serrated and ugly.
James allowed himself a moment of disappointment that Sherlock was weighed down by what other people think. Mourned that Sherlock would choose convention and propriety over honesty with his closest friend -
And then James had shaken it all off. Grinned and laughed and told Sherlock it was all just a joke.
Reached out to shake Sherlock’s shoulders, because he couldn’t help himself - he needed to touch him again before he walked away from this man who felt like more than a friend.
It had felt like a slap in the face, on the hillside.
James had resolved to cast off the dead weight after that night at the campsite. After his silent tears had dried, hidden in the shadows of old embers while the others slept in their bedrolls. His miscalculation was humiliating, but at least he hadn’t made the same mistake as Shou’an and tried kissing him to test his theory.
Love had almost made him foolish.
“It is far safer to be feared than loved,” he’d told Beatrice Holmes, shortly before she’d kissed him with a face that was beautiful but not-quite-right and eyes slightly-too-cold. Eyes that weren’t the ones he wanted.
Those eyes stare back at him from across the table now, large and sad beneath furrowed brows. Like a kicked fawn.
Sherlock is sifting for any truth to James’s words. There is truth, mixed in with the fairytale. The fantasy he’d nurtured since he’d lost his scholarship and they’d started traipsing across Oxford together, and then Paris, and then Constantinople. Hell, he’d practically spilled his guts to Sherlock on that hillside outside the mine - before he’d seen the horror and disappointment in Sherlock’s eyes. Before he’d realized that despite how similar they were, they were not actually the same. Because Sherlock Holmes was still burdened by ethics, and James Moriarty was burdened by him.
It had felt like a slap in the face back then, on the hillside.
But now, in the cafe, James Moriarty cuts off the dead weight with an expert hand. The shears slice cleanly, dislodge the boulder from his breastbone. He insists he feels nothing.
Sherlock looks down. Blinks. Considers. He is just another mark caught in Moriarty’s web. He looks less sad, more pensive now.
“What?” James asks, pressing his luck. “You don’t believe me?” He insists this mistrust does not hurt. “Ah, Sherlock,” he says archly, creating distance through his tone, "after everything that we have been through…surely by now you know me.”
He’s staring at Sherlock, begging him to look up, to meet his gaze and confess he mirrors James’s heart as much as his mind. That he knows. He knows. He must know.
Sherlock looks up, and all James sees is a kicked fawn. A mark to be manipulated, another poor sod to be fleeced for information.
His chest is numb.
They hold each other’s gazes now, as Sherlock’s doe-eyed expression shifts into a more resigned stare.
James insists it doesn’t hurt.
He downs the last of his whiskey to soften the sting, to bring back an echo of their earlier camaraderie. He thinks of the equation in his pocket, of seeing Beatrice tonight. Of her close-enough-but-not-quite-right mouth and her slightly-too-cold eyes.
He can make do with the safer option.
But then he catches sight of the key in Sherlock’s lap. The way he twists it in his fingers.
“What’s that?” James asks, for purely self-interested reasons, shrugging off any lingering weight of worry for the man across from him, with the nimble fingers and almost-perfect mind.
For a moment, it feels like Oxford again: a promising lead, the start of a new mystery.
He watches Sherlock feel it too, the call to confide, to collaborate.
But then his expression shutters.
He looks up at James, and for a moment he thinks Sherlock’s eyes are watering, but it must be a trick of the light.
“Nothing,” Sherlock says. And just like that, the key is gone, tucked back into his pocket.
“Nothin’?” James asks, his accent thicker as he feels the schism, the distance, the divide growing wider now that Sherlock is finally aware of it too. Between English and Irish. Ethics and opportunity. Cowardice and freedom.
Jame’s eye flit from the key back to Sherlock. He has that wounded fawn look again. It shouldn’t hurt James. It doesn’t.
Sherlock raises an eyebrow. “It’s nothing,” he says.
And so are they.