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Jim’s plan had been simple: go inside 221b Baker Street, put a few cameras here and there, go out and maybe casually mention something that he shouldn’t know the next time he saw Sherlock.
Yes, strictly business, which meant that he really hadn’t expected to end up having tea with Sherlock’s not-housekeeper, nibbling on a scone while masquerading as the detective’s boyfriend.
It was all her fault, really.
Everything had gone well at first, he had chosen a day when the flat would be empty and gotten inside silently, he had moved around the living room, the kitchen, placing discreet cameras and microphones that he knew Sherlock would mistake for the Iceman’s, observing, trying to deduce the history behind every little trinket—
Then he had ended up frozen in front of Sherlock’s bedroom, had hesitated, trying to fight the urge—surely the other would notice an invasion of his privacy, surely he would know that his landlady wouldn’t go inside there and touch his things, surely he would see that something was amiss and ruin the whole thing by finding the cameras too quickly—and ultimately failed.
Curse the cameras, curse his HD feed inside Sherlock’s flat, they couldn’t even compare to getting inside that room.
Confident in the correctness of his decision, Jim had opened the door wide and stepped inside, slowly taking in all of the little things that adorned the walls, all of the little details, the fact that Sherlock’s bed was perfectly made and that everything was tidy while the rest of the flat was a barely controlled mess.
There were various posters, a drawing of an anatomically correct bee, a picture of Mendelez near an old version of the periodic table and then the current one on another wall, a fancy looking CD player and a framed picture of Edgard Allan Poe on the other side of the room, a bust of Goethe and various books on chemistry, insects, poetry…
For a man who was said to be completely utilitarian with his own mind palace, he had a lot of trinkets and books on subjects that could hardly be used in his cases—unless the criminals were particularly creative, Jim would have planned a few pretty murders for him if he hadn’t been planning to destroy his life.
His bathrobe had been here too, hanging on a coat rack on the door, and the only way Jim had found to resist the urge to steal it had been to sprawl himself on Sherlock’s bed.
The pillows had smelled like his shampoo, Jim would need to check the bathroom later and see just what he used, probably some expensive and hard to find one seeing as he hadn’t smelled this exact scent anywhere else.
Lying there, comfortable, he had entertained the thought of letting Sherlock find him there and acting like it had been his scheme all along, like he had just wanted to mess with him a little, but seeing as he had just managed to get rid of the pneumonia he had ended with after the Iceman’s ‘gentle care’, Jim hardly felt like he had the energy for mind games and verbal battles today.
No, really, leaving Sherlock traces of his visit would be more than enough to annoy him anyway, Jim had known that not meeting him and sticking to his plan was his best decision.
It wasn’t like Sherlock wanted to see him either, seeing how he had sold him out to his brother and let him torture him.
Next time, Jim would make sure that he had a reason to hate his presence.
So Jim had forced himself to get off the bed, fluffed the pillow a bit, and left the room.
He had been about to close the door behind him when he had heard her voice echoing behind him, that surprised oh! and then—
“You must be Sherlock’s boyfriend!”
Mrs Hudson.
And he hadn’t meant to be seen, even less to have a conversation with the witness, but the way she had said that had been so certain, so self-convinced, that Jim had stayed.
Sherlock? Having a boyfriend?
This was still just business, he needed to know that new pressure point, he wasn’t staying for any other reason, just that.
So here he was now, in 221a, drinking tea with Mrs Hudson, acting like, yes, he was dating Sherlock, yes, the other had given him a key, and yes, he had actually been allowed there and hadn’t broken in.
That was going to go great.
“I didn’t know that he had talked about me,” Jim said, smiling his best ‘I am sweet and infatuated’ smile before sipping on the tea, his eyes never once leaving the old woman, watching the smallest of her reactions in search of more information.
The thought of the detective having a boyfriend was laughable at best. Sherlock Holmes? The man married to his work? The man who didn’t seem to understand—or to want to understand—even his ordinary friends?
The man who had asked to meet him for something that had sounded surprisingly like a date only to send his brother the location?
No, surely such a man couldn’t have a boyfriend, he was like Jim after all, as much as he probably hated it, and even if Jim had thought that he, like ordinary people, could also fall in love, Sherlock had shown him just how sorely mistaken he had been.
“Oh, of course, he talked about you!” Mrs Hudson answered, smiling brightly. “John wasn’t happy with the whole thing, poor man, been trying to convince himself that what he needs is a girlfriend, but well, with Sherlock already taken, I guess it’s better than nothing.”
Jim somehow resisted the urge to snicker and stayed in character, munching on an objectively very good biscuit before continuing his questioning.
“What has he told you about me? Gotta keep the story straight and all, you understand,” he joked.
“Well, he did say something about you being a consulting criminal—” Jim’s smile froze on his face. “—but I figured that it was his way of saying that you stole his heart.”
Alright, alright, false alert, Jim’s hands relaxed, moved away from the teapot they had been about to throw.
He wouldn’t need to call for a clean team in one of the most secured places of England, great.
But wait.
A consulting criminal?
That was hardly a common job-
Had Sherlock really talked about him then?
The nerve of that man, calling him his boyfriend after blowing off their first date and tipping off his brother!
Fucker.
“Oh, I’m the criminal now?” Alright, maybe he actually was, but Mrs Hudson hardly knew that, did she? “If I stole his heart, I did it because he had already stolen mine.”
The landlady merely smiled, looking amused.
“What do you do then?”
Answering that, yes, he was in fact a criminal mastermind, might be a little counterproductive.
“I am a consultant, but mainly for IT problems.”
Hacking the government to retrieve files counted as an IT problem, right?
“Did you two meet because he needed your expertise on a case then?”
Jim felt like he was the one being questioned instead of the opposite, he wasn’t quite sure what to think of it, but at least, Mrs Hudson’s ‘interrogation’ didn’t involve electricity and waterboarding.
And again, he was enduring it for information about Sherlock, but why was he doing it at this point?
Seeing as Sherlock had said that his ‘boyfriend’ was a consulting criminal, he had probably completely invented the whole thing just to get Mrs Hudson to stop thinking that he was dating John.
He still answered, however, because when one treated him politely—Mycroft could have gone a lot farther if he had actually nicely asked, it wasn’t like Jim had cared more about some random pieces of his network than Sherlock at this point—Jim answered in kind.
“Well, I don’t think he remembers that but the first time I saw him was actually when we were kids, someone had gotten murdered in my school and Sherlock came to investigate.” He wondered if he sounded as bitter as he felt. “I was pretty surprised to see him twenty years later.”
“A childhood crush, how sweet!”
Had it been? He had been fascinated, yes, obsessed, he had dreamt of the boy he had seen, of his sharp eyes and soft curls, of his pretty lips curling around witty remarks, of his face, lightening up upon Jim entering the room—
Oh.
It didn’t change anything though, did it?
Whether he had liked Sherlock after seeing him for the first time or when he had met him face to face years later, it didn’t matter, simply because when Mycroft had finally let him go after two months to make the failsafe cascade stop, Jim had only held hatred for Sherlock.
“It must have been hard for you two to see each other these last few months—” Did she know? “—with Sherlock always being out on a case or another… Probably why the poor dear always looked so gloomy,” Mrs Hudson remarked. “What with his brother crashing your last date and all.”
Jim froze for the second time this afternoon, his hand itching for a weapon.
He wasn’t used to feeling cornered, and it certainly wasn’t a feeling that he liked, but somehow, an old woman with kind eyes who seemed to know made him feel on the brink of something he couldn’t quite place far too many times.
“Oh?” he managed to ask, looking uninterested.
“You didn’t think that he just decided not to show up without telling you, did you?”
But he had, hadn’t he?
Mrs Hudson must have guessed his thoughts because she shook her head, continuing.
“Oh no, his brother came by, said that he was being stupid and prevented him from leaving.” The Iceman? Had he known? “Sherlock was furious of course, but he didn’t have much choice… He didn’t tell you about that?”
The tea and the biscuits were a good way to take pauses to think without freezing like a pigeon about to be hit by a car, Jim had to admit that he was very thankful to the snacks.
“He didn’t,” Jim simply said, looking down at the little tea that was left inside his cup.
Sherlock hadn’t said anything because he had known, because he had been working with Mycroft, because he hadn’t cared about what would happen to him nor had he cared enough about his feelings to tell that lie to Jim’s face.
Maybe he would have forgiven him if, once he had gotten out, he had seen a text on his phone, a few lines, explaining what had happened, an apology, an invitation to a date his brother wouldn’t be able to crash.
Maybe he would have.
When he had gotten back, his phone had taunted him with his silence, with its stillness, Jim had wanted Sherlock dead at this point already, but he had still hoped that he would be given a reason to let him live, a reason to forget everything.
Nothing had come.
“Hmm, you too really need to chat, what you two need is good and healthy communication, too many couples fall apart because they lack that,” Mrs Hudson said, tearing him out of his dark thoughts and leaving Jim on his seat not quite linked to reality. “Here, I will leave you two alone to talk, do try to listen to what he has to say, Mr Moriarty."
And before he had the time to have, to ask since when had she known, she was standing up, walking out of her kitchen, walking past Sherlock who was standing there in the doorway, looking at him with wide eyes.
Fuck.