Work Text:
Chapter One
Too Evil
“Anything happened lately?”
The therapist spoke, her brows knitting in question.
John wasn’t sure how he had happened to visit her. His colleague and friend, Michael Stamford, had stopped by his mansion once with a card to Ella’s address. After a small heated argument John had initiated, he tossed the damned card into his drawer, for it to not be seen until ten months later. That’s how long it took for John’s state to deteriorate.
The days started getting worse. Or rather, he started getting worse. Perhaps both got worse. It was all a blur. A blur of rage and anger, of frustration and hesitation, of need and want, of freedom and unfreedom.
The days melted into each other. John couldn’t differentiate between them anymore. They were the same. Nothing happened. Same old boring routine of going to meetings, giving presentations, and preparing paperwork. And it drove him to the verge of insanity.
So he experimented. He tried changing. He tried everything from changing the coffee brand and mug to new activities each week as shooting ranges, he even got back to rugby.
But still, it was there.
Naggin at him.
Eating him.
Boredom. Dullness. Emptiness. Nothing.
Like a black hole inside of him. Swallowing everything he had. Every last bit. Leaving him drained. Unstable.
And so he continued experimenting more, crossing a line which seemed invisible to John at the time. He did unspeakable things. Unmentionable things.
He wasn’t proud of them. But it worked, at least for a while. Hence he didn’t pay much attention to the nature of what he was doing.
It really did work. At least for a while.
He felt content. Something that brought pleasure and relief. There was finally something to look forward to.
But it didn’t last long. They never last. At some point, one is bound to realize what is happening.
Things never last till eternity, anyway.
Time went on. As it always had. And he started feeling disgusted at himself more and more. At what his body did. At what his mouth uttered. At what his ears heard. At what his eyes saw. At what his mind demanded. At everything.
He was back at square one. If not lower.
It was a pit. Dark, deep, and draining. An abyss. And he was never climbing out of it, at least not alone.
And realization struck.
He had been in denial all this time. Nothing will ever change, if not for worse. He is broken beyond repair.
And he lost control.
John walked through the streets that night. The street lamps look down upon him as if he were a mere nothing. Just another tiny speck of human flesh that’s worth nothing.
He had walked out from another brothel, disguised as another fuckboy. Fists formed, his fingernails digging into his palm’s flesh as he walked briskly. His hoodie hiding most of his face which carried an expression of pure disgust.
Rage shot through his body as a shiver gave away. His breath fast. Brows furrowed. Head bowed in shame at his own self. How could he have done this to himself? How could he let himself fall even deeper into the abysmal hole?
As he turned into a corner, the air turned chillier and a shorter man jogged beside him. Drug dealer. Apparent from clothes. And John didn’t think twice before his fists landed in the bloke’s face.
It was all a fast blur. The dealer struggling underneath him, but with one swift movement, John pinned him. And with another movement, he was crying out in pain. And then John unleashed his anger, using the dealer as his punching bag.
He beat him. Hard. Forceful. Mercy wasn’t a part of his vocabulary anymore.
His knuckles turned red, fresh cuts were observed as John growled at himself. Glaring at the dealer who was shouting, John couldn’t understand what he said.
He was blinded by fury at himself as memories of his so-called father returned to him.
The monster had a rather liking to beating. On the drunken nights he would return home he would use John as his personal punching bag. Sometimes using any object at his disposal to use against John’s youthful body. The memories attacked John viciously, and John did not want to be or resemble that monster.
He rolled himself to his side. The dealer took the opportunity to leave as fast as he can. And John shouted something.
His fists then collided with the ground beneath him, his forehead pressed to it, as he let out shattered breaths and screams. The cold attacked his lungs as he sucked in a chillier breath, and then he let out a mixed noise from the back of his throat. Tears escaped him. And it was the first time he cried in ages. Everything came tumbling down on him. His world was long gone, he was only existing off of power and money, nothing else that satisfies him.
It was eating him. Inside out viscously, tearing his flesh wide open as he struggled for breath. He was rotting at self-disgust to the far measures he had had to take entertain himself. To keep himself living. To keep himself from falling apart.
And all for nothing. Nothing good came out of it in the long term, only short intervals of pleasure and relief and excitement from reality.
As quick as he attacked the dealer, he got up from his position and continued walking, hoping to save his dignity from the wondering eyes of the homeless after breaking apart so openly.
Ten months of growing within the underground life of London. Getting involved in everything from prostitution to substance abuse. He grew, same as he grew within his daytime career. Took him only ten months. And for what?
He went home that night. Home? He didn’t even know what home meant anymore. Definitely not in his vocabulary anymore. He went to his luxurious mansion, then. Headed straight for his alcoholic drinks collection. And drank away. He drank away his anger, his agitation, his sorrow, his memories, his life, his everything, and then he beautifully fainted his arse off from the liquor.
The next day, the socks attempted to save him. Even the bloody socks. They fucking attempted to save him, what was he, a charity case know? Bloody hell. After his living and breathing friends and colleagues failed to aid him, none living things turned to his aid. Bloody fantastic.
John’s main drawer of socks was empty, how that happened, it was beyond his knowledge. So he went to his bedside drawer, remembering he tossed one in there. As he retrieved the sock, something fell in the process. A card. The therapist’s card.
And so here he was. Attempting to once again scrap his life together using professional help.
Something did in fact happen. Oh God yes.
“Met someone about a month ago.” John’s face gave away a quick smile for Ella.
His therapist gazes at him with her usual demeanor of boredom. It’s soothing in an odd way; someone who isn’t afraid of him.
John’s an utter arsehole of a boss. A monster. Inhuman. Inhumane. The devil himself. And he knows it. Heard it confirmed behind his back many a time.
It’s not surprising, not at all. That miserable childhood of neglect and abuse battling to see which could do the most damage followed by a decade of high-pressure school life and even more soul-crushing ladder-climbing broken up only by a short stint in the military where the last lingering bits of his idealism had been obliterated.
It was easy to get into the business industry. But succeeding, that’s a whole other world. It’s a challenge. One that John took without hesitation. After the military and the chaos and brightness and death and gloom and the excitement it brought, civilian life was nothing to John. He craved more. And so he took on the challenge of owning a multi-million dollar company.
By the time he had clawed his way to the very pinnacle of his industry, he had literal blood on his hands, a trial of metaphorical bodies behind him, and the only thing keeping him from stepping out one of the windows of his entire top floor office had been the sickening thought that his father would sneer at him from the pits of hell for giving up.
He is the man who has everything and nothing, and he’d had nothing to live for.
“Random stranger. Literally bumped into him at the gallery,” John started. The gallery was another thing to get his mind off of things instead of indulging in other activities. And there he was, walking down the aisle when he bumped into this strikingly looking man, who gazed back at him in a menacing way. “He looked at me like he was looking at the art, and it wasn’t appreciative. Then he called me – what was it – a touch-starved, love-famished skeleton of a child behind money, playing with lives because no one ever taught me to play with blocks.”
This gets a blink and movement from both of Ella’s eyebrows. Her mouth even twitches, like it’s trying to remember how to smile. John wonders why.
“He’s infuriating,” John continues, grinning idiotically despite himself. It’s fine; her office is sealed off and soundproofed, and he pays her well to keep his secrets.
“We got into it right there with flutes of champagne still in our hands,” John remembered as he battled off at the dark curled stranger, how dare he address John like that. “And he’s giving as good as he gets only he looks like he’s having fun, listening to me tear into him and even threaten to destroy everything he cares about.” John recited as he remembered the feeling of wanting to curl his palms against the stranger’s much too pale skin. To feel the heartbeat of the man. To strip the heartbeat from the heart.
A short sigh escaped from his therapist as she tilted her head ever so slightly, never breaking eye contact.
“Yeah, not good, I know. I don’t give a shit and neither did he. He’s….” the man had seemed nothing like John ever saw. Everything from the way the man talked to how he held himself or his dramatic coat with his attitude and his voice, it was all…”…interesting, and what absolutely drove me ‘round the twist was that he acted like he had the same sort of ‘oh what an interesting little bug’ thought about me.”
The words had fled the stranger’s mouth at lightning speed. Picking at John’s flesh, taking him apart and staring at his inside’s working. He rattled off telling everything about John’s life. And John had sat there, dumbstruck at how the strange knew so much from so little to how insensitive the bastard had been when talking about his alcoholic sister and abusive household.
“And he’s….nothing! No family connections worth mentioning, no real money, no high-placed career.” He was as good as a piece of sand, if not for the one thing that turned him into a grain of gold instead of sand. John remembered how the stranger, with the same sort of hypnotizing way, gave away the secret to how he retrieved such delicate information. Deductions, the man had called them. “But what a brain!” John had more than once had his jaw hanging low despite himself as the man had on several occasion uttered such brilliance. “He knows a little bit about everything and everything about most things, and nothing that I do or say or buy seems to impress the man. It feels like trying to entertain someone by doing a bit of magic, you know with a rabbit and the hat, only they know all of the tricks already and they’re even explaining what bits you’ve got wrong, or where your technique is shit.”
Trim legs uncross themselves, then re-cross the other way, and his therapist actually speaks.
“And you went from threatening to wining and dining…how?”
“Oh, the usual,” John waved off. It’s easy getting things done when you are at the top of the mountain surrounded by wealth and power. It’s amazing what power and wealth can bring. An amazing amount of things can be made with the combination of both of them, yet it was still so little to satisfy John and his true needs. “Had him tracked down and looked into. Then I invited him to dinner. He turned me down.” John’s disbelieving voice carried out.
“Said that being the only two diners for the night at Araki sounded boring – boring! I have had corporations and daughters and wives thrown at me with Araki – but that I was welcome to join him at a crime scene instead if I promised not to ask too many stupid questions. Said my knowledge of firearms and corporate espionage might come in handy solving a murder. He consults with the police off the books, apparently.
After having run diagnostics on the raven’s background, John rather found the man intriguing, to say the least.
The night John had shown up at the dark-haired man’s doorstep was one that he shall never forget.
He hadn’t had enough time to knock when the door flung open, the man stood tall with an elegant suit as he beamed at John with his charming smile that almost swept John off his feet.
The man had grabbed John’s arm and lead him outside to get a cab, telling him how he came at the right time.
And the events that followed were unbelievable. John had learned a whole deal of things, including that the man’s profession had a name.“A consulting detective, he said. The only one in the world.” The man had said it in such arrogance, proud of his profession as they exited the crime scene.
“He thinks…that I need some excitement in my life.” John huffs in amusement. “So it’s been a few weeks now, of offering to take him to Italy or japan for a weekend and instead eating Chinese takeaway at his flat while he rants at how unimaginative criminals are or getting dragged down dark alleys by the hand like a little kid so we can watch for a burglar or blackmailer or whatever.” John remembers how the man had declined his offer of abroad travel without a second thought. Instead choosing to let John in on his work, and John would be lying if he said he wasn’t enjoying it one bit. “The turnover rate in my security detail’s giving HR the fits.”
“And is it just wining and dining, or are you also wooing and doing?” The therapist asked.
“Getting there,” John says, then frowns and admits, “I think. I hope. God this is miserable; not being sure.”
“Yes, you look very broken up.”
“Don’t I just,” John grins.
