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Obsession claws through Sherlock's mind, tearing holes into his memory, burning and ransacking, until all he can think about is the Lord of Crime. It's all Milverton's fault, really.
It's Milverton's fault for bringing both him and Liam to that mansion out in the middle of nowhere, and for trying to make them play as actors on his stage. His fault that he didn't expect Sherlock to shoot him. His fault that Liam finally said Sherlock's name, but it felt bitter coming off his lips.
His fault that Sherlock had to find the words to apologize to John for killing a man, and his fault that Liam’s name was now known, and it was no longer an intimate little game between the two of them. It was a public manhunt.
Sherlock hasn’t left his study for days.
Sitting there, staring up at a wall full of everything he could ever need or want to know about the Lord of Crime, is addicting and enthralling and despite no one else understanding, it is the best of games to him.
Trailing lines from one point to another, his wall becomes a web, entangled strings enclosing on James Moriarty, and then finally Liam. He is the spider perched in the trap he has made, waiting for Sherlock (no, that’s too cocky to believe Liam did this all for him) to take the bait.
It is the most intricate game of chess that's ever graced his presence, but Sherlock's never much liked playing.
Nor does he like losing, and despite his best efforts, Liam is too good.
(He loves it, secretly. Loves the feeling of this beautiful man spending his time playing cat and mouse games with Sherlock. That the king is willingly stooping to the level of an unruly pawn.
Sherlock can only imagine the euphoria of capturing the spider and toppling the king from his throne. It gives him a rush, more elaborate and stimulating than any amount of opioid has ever).
A brief rustle of movement outside of his foggy window draws his sudden attention, his glazed eyes sharpening to drift over. There's hardly any light outside, save for one weak streetlight across the road, beams barely making it over to the front of his flat. It's enough, though, to illuminate a glimpse of shaggy platinum blonde masking crimson eyes.
Check.
Not until he's halfway down the steps, one arm in an inside-out sleeve of his jacket, that Sherlock realises it's possibly a bad idea to let the Lord of Crime into his flat at such an ungodly hour. But it's a thought he has only for a moment, and not driven by any logicality of his, that much is for sure.
There was a stark contrast between the name the public had given him and the Liam that Sherlock knew. Between the bloodthirsty murderer who killed without reason, the devil who played games against God, and the math professor from Durham who had once told Sherlock if and when he caught the Lord of Crime, he must condemn him regardless of his attempts at reforming the social caste.
So perhaps the Lord of Crime would kill him, perhaps even William James Moriarty would, but Liam wouldn't.
The door swings outwards and frigid air hits Sherlock like a brick, a light sprinkling of rain drizzling onto his jacket and mussed ponytail as he runs a hand through his bangs. And there he is, his Liam, standing on his doorstep, as brilliantly handsome as ever. The sight of him is almost enough to make Sherlock forget about the wall of papers and string taped up in his bedroom, and the front page of every newspaper article that had graced his presence in the past week.
It was just how Liam was. Too magnetic, too distracting, too inebriating. Masked by a beautiful façade, an unbreaking, steady smile of poise and elegance that pulled crowds in, and screaming, rushing torrents of emotion, glimmering sparks of studying intelligence thudding behind his irises that drew Sherlock in. The harder the problem was to solve, the more fun he had with it.
That isn't the case now, however. Liam's feelings trickle out, cracks in the thin mask, plastered quite simply on his being.
His arm strains on the railing in front of the door, his desperate attempt to hold himself up. The ever-so-smug expression across his delicate features falters. His cheeks are flushed, humidity swirling in his exhales, his bangs plastered to his face by what Sherlock could only assume was sweat.
Sherlock's eyes linger a bit too long, perhaps, staring at his fluttering eyes. His hitching breaths permeate the intimate silence, chorusing the splatter of rain onto cold hard pavement, and despite everything, Sherlock can only see the shimmering halo of the streetlight on his hair. When he lets out a long, shivering breath, Sherlock can feel the warmth on his cheek. They are maybe inches apart, Liam's face sickly pale, Sherlock's bright red, and they are illuminated by a sole spotlight. The London streets are empty just for them, and them alone.
"Good evening, Mr Holmes," Liam smiles mutely, barely a greeting behind the words.
"Sorry to break it to ya, Liam, but it's well past evening," Sherlock stammers, doing his best to find his voice.
Liam tilts his head in genuine inclination. "Is it?"
"It's, uh-" He fumbles through his pockets, coming up with nothing, "Sometime after 3...?"
"Oh."
"Yeah."
He wants to kick himself hard upside the head. Liam is at his flat, looking like death itself, and he's here muttering over the time?
"May I come in? If it's not an intrusion," Liam asks suddenly, but evenly. Politely. It's infuriating.
Sherlock hesitates, for reasons unknown. He wants Liam to come in, probably needs to let him, to at least get him to sit down, get a blanket around his shoulders and a cup of something warm in his hands. Be hospitable to the most prolific serial killer in London.
"Yeah. Yeah, come in." He stumbles over his words, but Liam's not listening as he carefully traces his hand along the rail and inside the door frame, holding his body weight up with a single, trembling arm.
Although he trusts Liam, morbidly so even, he can't help but turn around as they're walking in if only to make sure Liam's not holding a knife to his back. He's not (just as Sherlock expected) and now that they're under a proper light, he doesn't just look not perfectly Liam, he looks downright awful.
Awful in the way that a man who has done nothing but kill, and stew in his misery and self-destruction for the past week would be expected to look. Careworn exhaustion screams in the three-inch bags under his eyes, his skin sickly white, every bit of him missing that typical nobleman gloss and glamour.
Almost the moment he crosses the threshold into 221B, dripping muddy water onto the floor, he finally gives in to whatever bone-deep fatigue thrummed through his veins. He stumbles slightly, trying to keep the apparent dizziness shoved down, leaning so heavily against the door he almost slides down to the floor. It's almost defeat. Liam's a fighter, but this is a battle he doesn't have the willpower to keep up with anymore.
So he loses. Of course.
-
Liam finds himself, only minutes later, curled up on Sherlock's couch, his hair wet with rain and sweat pulled back into a rough ponytail that he still manages to make look elegant. Two hands are wrapped around a cup, shaking so hard that little drips of coffee dribble down the side and onto his fingers tapping rhythms onto the porcelain.
This is the closest he'll ever get to submission, Sherlock knows. Once Liam's lucid enough to hold a comprehensive conversation, Sherlock won't be able to keep him sitting on a couch quietly much longer. But until then, he watches.
He's never understood the beauty of illness. That retched, fatal disease ravaged a body, left the victim little more than a shell, and that people found it stunning. Illness is not elegance, it is the abhorrence of death: decay, rot.
"Thank you."
Liam's the exception, though.
"Yeah," Sherlock sighs, settling down on the couch opposing Liam, "Don't thank me for something dumb like that. It's coffee. Cheap stuff, too."
"I meant allowing me in." He opposes, slowly and methodically setting down the still full cup on the table.
"Don't thank me for that either."
"You didn't have to."
Sherlock scoffs loudly, "And what? Leave you out there to die?"
He regrets his word choice almost immediately when Liam tenses, and shrinks back slightly, what little bantering energy in him entirely diminishing. Death is a sore subject, and Sherlock knows he should've known better.
“You should’ve.”
Sherlock laughs, “God, Liam. Fuck-” He rubs between his temples in exasperation. Liam without his inhibitions is one thing, but Liam without inhibitions and so far gone that every word is a suggestion of suicide is impossible. “You know what? Why does this have to curtain with your death? And why’d you come here just to tell me that?”
“I’m sorry?” Liam blinks. “Would you rather me not have come?” He almost sounds offended, and for the first time that night, the tired gleam in his eyes melts away.
“No. ‘m glad you did come, I just don’t know why.”
Unbridled frustration is spilling out of him, frustration that the most brilliant man Sherlock has ever had the pleasure of meeting is so oblivious that he can’t realise no one wants him gone. That he doesn’t realise there is more meaning in the world beyond carrying it on his shoulders.
“There are hundreds and thousands of solutions, most of which are more convenient than nosediving off the Tower Bridge, so why? Why do you need this Liam?”
Liam draws in a sharp inhale.
Sherlock continues, too livid to not be oblivious, “You aren’t a coward. So stop acting like one. Stop running. Stay-”
“I can’t. That isn’t my choice anymore.”
“It’s always your choice, Liam,” he growls, low but not threatening, “You don’t have to follow through.”
Liam shakes his head, insisting, “This isn’t something that can be stopped. The curtains are drawn-”
“And the world isn’t a stage.”
Liam can’t hear him. No matter how much Sherlock screams and shouts for him to just stay, he can’t. He won’t.
It is one problem, the only problem, that he can find no foreseeable ending to.
“I’m not going to be a pawn. I’m not going to follow your script,” he kneels until he’s level with Liam. “Because I am a selfish man, and I will take what I want.”
“Then you are a fool, Holmes. You are trying to save a dead man walking.”
“Then a fool I am.” He sounds like he's pleading. "But I don't care. Liam, all you need to do is live. I'll do the rest."
"You-?" Liam laughs, cutting through Sherlock like an ice-cold knife. "Why won't you make this easy?" For once, Liam doesn't sound sure of himself. He hardly looks it.
"You were the one who came here, weren't you?"
Liam must have known. He must have seen the way that Sherlock is chasing him, the light that erupts in his eyes whenever he talks to him, and the fact that Sherlock of all people wasn't going to listen to what he wanted. Liam knew this outcome. He didn't get to argue it now.
He pauses, noticeably, and Sherlock wonders if his pleas are falling on deaf ears.
"You knew I wasn't going to go silently, that I wasn't going to let you go silently, Liam. So why did you pick me?"
Liam's defences are crumbling, and Sherlock is struggling.
"I don't-" He starts, but tapers off, trying to force the words from his throat. "I don't know. I don't know why I keep coming back."
"Now that's just a blatant lie."
"No," Liam demands it like a question. "No. It's you because it is necessary. London needs to see the Lord of Crime fall to the great detective."
He's not talking to Sherlock. It is the first, and the last, time that he will ever doubt himself, that the steel in his mind cracks and the sprawling, linear path before him forks.
It is exposure that Sherlock can see in Liam's eyes, it is fear, and it is anything but a mask. It is all new to him, this vulnerability that he can see in a man no more than a built statue, a god crafted by his own hand out of marble and dreams, rust-stained, crumbling. It is all new, and he loves it.
He has a footing to hold onto as he scrambles to drag Liam up from the depths of the purgatory he has condemned himself to.
Exploiting his desperation is a crime unforgiven, but it is the only way Sherlock can save him.
"And it's just that. They want the Lord of Crime to die. They want James Moriarty. They do not, however, want you, Liam," Sherlock protests. "They don't know you."
"And you do?" Liam shoots back with venom, a haughty laugh echoing behind his words. "You know nothing of me, Sherlock Holmes."
"No, I don't." He sighs in resignation, "But it's different. I want to know you. I want to understand everything about you."
It is Liam who won't let him.
"Stop hiding from me. Please." He extends a hand to Liam's face, and he accepts the touch. "A chase isn't a proper chase unless there's an ending, don'tcha think?"
Liam smiles sadly, cheeks warm, eyes cold. "Then I'm afraid you've yet to catch me, Holmes."
"Sherlock." He corrects.
"Not yet."
It's another Liam defence. One that holds a safe boundary between the two of them, lest Liam snap.
Sherlock sighs, his lungs hollow and aching for more. He needs Liam to give him more, give him something.
He drops his hands from Liam's cheeks, "Get some sleep, Liam. I'm sure you need it."
Liam's eyes are on him as he leaves.
When Liam wakes up it's still dark.
Sherlock doesn't even try to sleep. Instead, he stands in the kitchen, watching a kettle of water boil, waiting for Liam.
There's a shuffle of footsteps in the hallway, a thump of Liam dragging himself along the wall, and then the creak of hinges.
Without even looking up, he says, "G'morning."
"Mor'ng," Liam mumbles in response, voice cracking.
"Sleep well?"
"Mhm." He sounds still half asleep.
"Earl Grey's fine right?"
"Hm?"
"Tea."
"Oh. Yeah."
"Good, 'cause that's what I made."
Sherlock turns around, shooting Liam a crooked smile like the events of hours prior hadn't even happened. Liam looks like he's about to collapse in the doorway, shivering with the thin blanket he fell asleep with draped over his shoulders.
"Take a seat. It'll be done soon."
The kettle whistles, a sharp hiss of air breaking the silence. Liam sits.
"How do you take it?" Liam doesn't respond. "Liam?"
He startles from his daze. "Sorry. Um.."
"No sugar and a splash of milk."
"No sugar and a splash of milk?" Sherlock asks, at the same time Liam answers. "Makes sense. You seem like that kinda guy."
As he pours the stream of water into the only clean cup he has, he chuckles lightly, "You're so predictable, y'know?"
"And you're a menace," Liam responds curtly, gaze still transfixed on the ground.
Sherlock grins. It fades.
"You weren't supposed to be here until tonight, right?"
"..Yes."
"So that makes this the end? The last time I'll ever get to share a proper tea with you?"
"Don't do that to me, Holmes."
"I'm not doing anything."
Liam laughs tiredly, "Are you going to badger me again? I'm not even supposed to be here."
"And I'm not keeping you here." Sherlock shrugs. "You can go. Just after the tea, since John will have a fit if I waste a bag on no one. But while I have you here, go through the spiel you were gonna give me tonight. Might as well, right?"
"Spiel?" Liam shakes his head, "There's nothing to say that I haven't already said."
"You were gonna write me a letter," Sherlock responds, stirring the cup of tea. "Two, probably. Lead me to a pre-determined place. Give me your suicide note. The usual. So walk me through it. You're here now, why wait?"
Liam purses his lips and adverts his eyes.
Sherlock waits.
"You asked me, earlier, why you. Why, despite everything, I kept coming back." He's speaking slow, methodically, reciting the words like a holy doctrine that has been reread. But then he pauses, and the cadence changes. "And I don't truly know."
"I don't know what you mean to me. What significance, out of everyone, that you had to me. But maybe, maybe it's because you didn't look at me like them."
"I am not a god. I never wished to be one." Liam tries, steady, but trembling. "I am an unfair jury, and an unfair judge, and an unwavering executioner, but I am not a god. And I don't think you ever saw me as one. So I kept coming back."
He traces a hand down his arm. "But on top of everything, I have never had as much fun as I did meeting you."
Sherlock's head is spinning.
"You made me forget, if only for a moment, about everything," he smiles fondly, eyes wistful.
So that's why. That is why Liam keeps pushing and pulling, and never lets Sherlock get closer than he must. Because Liam is scared of forgetting everything: forgetting the pain that he thinks he deserves, the guilt that holds his every thought. It is fear.
"So," Liam continues, "I wanted nothing other than to spend my last moments forgetting. To die by your side."
Sherlock stares. "Then I guess we're the same in that regard." He sets the cup down in front of Liam and pulls out a chair with a loud screech. "There is nobody else in this world that I want to live next to as much as I do you."
Liam objects, "But that can't happen. I will ruin you. I don't want to ruin you."
"Liam."
"No.."
"Let me help you. Use me for everything that I am giving you." Sherlock says, eyes boring into him. "The world isn't your burden to carry, especially not alone. Never alone."
Checkmate.
It takes those words, and Liam breaks.
He wears his skin like a shield, wears his poker face as if the only thing between being violated is his smile and his ability to keep his eyes from wavering. Walls that he has spent an entire life building.
Ones that fell in seconds, fell because Sherlock won't give up.
"Dying isn't the only way to atone. It's not a way at all." He leans over the table, closing the gap tighter and tighter as Liam desperately fights to stop. "This world that you built means nothing to me unless you are in it. Don't make me attached and then run away."
Liam's breath hitches. "I don't want to run."
"Then don't. Stay."
The kitchen is cold, the air smells like weak tea and autumn mornings, and Liam is crying. For the first time since he was old enough to know pain, and to know guilt, his tears are not a sin.
"I am going to die, Sherlock," he coughs, shuddering breaths slurring his words.
Sherlock thumbs over his cheeks. "And I will save you."
And he means it. And he will mean it over and over again, as many times as it takes.