Chapter Text
The coach from Oxford to London took approximately three hours, if the weather was good and the horses were fresh. Today the horses were fine, but the weather was typical British autumn misery, which made James grateful for the shelter of the coach. Otherwise he might have been tempted to set off early in the day and attempt a walk to save on fare.
He walked the last half-mile to the pub named in the crumpled telegram in his pocket. It was a shabby place, but well-trafficked by the clientele. In a hostile city, an Irish pub was a refuge.
And this business wasn’t meant for English ears.
He ducked beneath the leaky awning and shook out his jacket, doffed his hat and shook that out too before shouldering his way inside. The barkeeper nodded at him, and he nodded back before sweeping his eyes about the dim interior for the person he was to meet.
They found him first.
“James, my lad!”
A grin split his face to match the one on the man who rose to greet him. Colm Calvert’s dark hair had silvered since James saw him last; his face had grown more lined. But the smile was one he’d known since childhood, and despite the many years that had passed since, he stepped without hesitation into the man’s open arms.
“Let me look at you,” Colm said, stepping back to hold him out at arm’s length. “So tall now!”
“Hardly,” James laughed.
“Well, compared t’ the last time I saw yeh. And looking more like your da every day.” Colm’s brogue was warm and rolling. Homesickness was not a luxury James allowed himself, but hearing Colm speak without a hint of the self-consciousness that troubled the few other Irish people James knew in Oxford, he came very close.
“He’d be proud o’you,” Colm said, squeezing James’ shoulders. James felt his smile fix.
“Can I treat you, Colm?”
“Not a bit, boyo. This round’s on me.”
They found a booth in a secluded corner, lit by a small lamp, and Colm brought two pints over. In the pubs around Oxford James tended to prefer whiskey. You could sip it if you wanted to linger, knock it back if you needed a quick exit. Pints were for nursing over conversations with friends, and friends were in short supply at Oxford.
They chatted casually for a bit, Colm reporting all the news from the village, dropping names James hadn’t heard or thought of in years. He asked about James’ studies, and James spun a few yarns about college parties and pretty coeds and the excitement of youth Colm seemed to want to hear from him — the lost lamb of Innishannon, making his way in the world.
“It seems to suit you,” Colm said, halfway through his second pint. James was still nursing his first; he was far from drunk, but he wanted to stay sharp. “Student life.”
“The life of the mind is quite stimulating, yes.”
“And life among the English?”
James’ smile pulled sideways into something bitter.
He did not tell Colm he was bored. That his fellow students were lackluster at best, boorish and tedious at worst. He did not tell Colm that a scholarship marked him as a student of no means among wealthy, coddled English children.
It wouldn’t take a genius to infer from that information that a fellow might be lonely.
Colm answered him with his own bitter smile.
“Finding yourself a bit of the black sheep?”
“I didn’t much fit with the flock in Innishannon, did I?”
“Maybe not. It was still your flock.” Colm took a swig. “You’re among the wolves, here.”
James bristled, though he didn’t let his expression slip.
“I’m not a sheep, Colm.” Colm regarded him over the rim of his glass. “I’m not without teeth here.”
Colm chuckled. “No, you’re not, are you?” He set his glass down and fixed him with a significant look. James straightened slightly. “I’d think you were born with teeth, if I ha’n’t seen you in your ma’s arms with nottin’ but gums. That’s why I’m comin’ to you.”
He leaned closer.
“I promised your da I’d leave you out of it,” Colm said softly. James’ heartrate ticked up, just a hair. “Wait until you were done with your schooling, at least. But that was a long time ago, and you’re a man now. And we need you.”
“We?” James gave the word weight. Colm raised his eyebrows, and nodded once.
“I know you know this ain’t a social visit.”
“I did deduce that.”
“Does the name Holmes mean anything to you?”
James blinked.
“I can’t say — wait.” Names and faces flicked through his memory, settling on a rangy fellow. Cold blue eyes, sharp nose, always impeccably dressed. “Yes. Bucephalus Hodge — that’s the dean of my college — has a new associate always bobbing around. I don’t remember his first name, it’s something odd, but I believe his name is Holmes. Why?”
Colm cast a look around the pub. For someone who clearly wanted this conversation to be covert, he was painfully obvious. If James had been another patron, he would have instantly angled himself to a spot where he could eavesdrop just for larks. The way to be covert was to talk as though your conversation was entirely commonplace, as innocuous as the weather. He’d think an operative would know that already. He found his own body language relaxing, as though to model it for his old family friend.
“We got word,” Colm murmured. “Of some kind of weapon the British government is developing. Something unlike anything we’ve ever seen.”
James did tense, then. His brain leaped ahead, knowing what Colm was getting at, but of course Colm said it anyway.
“War’s comin’. We can still buy her back with blood, but we’re not ready yet. And this weapon… it’s being talked about like a doomsday device. Something without any defense against it.”
We’ll buy her back with blood. His father’s rough voice, low and warm, sad and determined, still clear through all the intervening years. James had heard him say those words so many times. This land started free, my boy. We’ll make her free again.
“It’s a bit early, isn’t it?” James asked.
“We’ve only got one name connected with all this mess. Holmes. And here you are, with a Holmes right there in your college. Working with your dean.”
“You want me to investigate?”
“We need to know what it is. How close they are to using it.”
“Yes, I’m sure this Holmes fellow will offer it right up to a stranger over a pint.”
“Jim.” Christ, when was the last time someone had called him that? Sean, probably, and that wasn’t worth thinking of right now. “You were the smartest of us before you were in trousers. You’re good with people. You know how to get them talking. Just nose around a bit. Be subtle. I know you can. This is the best lead we have, and you’re the only person positioned to get to it. Just a few questions, leaf through a few papers if you can get to them. Clerical stuff. Nothing dangerous. Lord knows I don’t want your da coming back to haunt me for this.” He chuckled, but the sound was strained.
James tapped a finger against his pint glass. Colm pressed on.
“Come on, lad. When’s the last time you got to strike a blow, a real blow, against these shites? After everything they put you through, don’t you want to hit back?”
It was a cheap attempt at manipulation, James knew. But it didn’t change the truth: He did. He always wanted to hit back. It ached in the muscles of his face, where he wore his smile like armor; in his fists and his arms and shoulders, always braced for a punch in this land where people wielded politeness like a weapon always pointed at those they considered outsiders.
He wanted to hit back. He wanted it to hurt.
And he really was — he could not emphasize this enough — dangerously bored.
And if all it took was a little snooping?
“I’ll see what I can do.”
“Good lad.” Colm reached out and squeezed James’ shoulder. “Knew we could count on you.”
Colm finished his pint not long after, and they collected their coats and hats. Colm tipped the bartender, and James tipped too, though it cut perilously close to the fare he needed for the return journey. The barkeep nodded gratefully to both of them. Commiseration between countrymen, all strangers in a strange land.
“Not the lightest conversation between old friends,” Colm said affably as they stepped out into the street. There was something in the undercurrent of his words James couldn’t quite parse. Discomfort, maybe. Unease. “And yet your face don’t change a whit. Do you ever stop smiling, lad?”
James grinned a little wider. “And why would I do that, in such a fine world as this?”
He gestured at the falling evening, the soot and rain and London gloom. Colm chuckled bitterly.
“‘The last snake in Ireland,’” he said. “Lucky us. Go nosing around in their Eden, my boy. We’ll bring it down around them.”
He stuck out his hand. James pushed down the cold that had clenched his heart at the words and reached out his own hand. They shook.
“James Moriarty,” Colm said. “Welcome to the Brotherhood.”
The first objective was straightforward: Get into the good graces of Mycroft Holmes. (That was his name. Mycroft. James hadn’t been able to suppress a baffled laugh when he found out. These Englishmen.)
The problem was also straightforward: Mycroft Holmes was nearly always in the company of dean Sir Bucephalus Hodge. And Hodge did not like James Moriarty. He was not strictly sure if the dislike was born of his prejudice against the Irish or against scholarship students — that is, poor students, whose families would never be contributing financial donations for projects like his science hall. Whatever the reason, Hodge resisted the charms that had won over most of James’ professors, and was not impressed by James’ consistent performance at the top of his class. James found that the best way to handle him was simply to stay away.
There was no organic path through Hodge to Mycroft Holmes. Mycroft was almost always in Hodge’s company, and approaching them together was simply a nonstarter. Hodge did have an attractive assistant — Edie Blake, whom James knew to be delightfully sharp-tongued and quick-witted from having overheard her at a few parties — but he hadn’t actually spoken to her yet, so that would take a bit of working.
He considered the issue at dinner during the first week of Michaelmas term, watching the high table as Hodge and Holmes sat down to dine together. His fellow third-years at the table around him chattered about Hodge’s speech and the new science building. The presence of Chinese royalty among their number this year was a particularly exciting piece of gossip. James had caught a glimpse of Princess Shou’an earlier — very pretty, with a severe expression that quite intrigued him — but he could chase that possibility later.
The conversation ebbed and flowed around him, never quite excluding him, never quite folding him in. James existed on the periphery of Oxford’s cliques, able to join many circles for a brief visit but never welcome to stay. It had ceased to trouble him. Mostly.
How to get to Mycroft Holmes? When his sole aim seemed to be cleaving to Bucephalus Hodge as closely as possible?
Suddenly Holmes stiffened. James watched, intrigued, as the man went rigid with agitation at the presence of a chatty scout who had come to serve them for dinner.
He was tall, dark-haired, with blue eyes James could see from here, a sharp nose and high cheekbones James had seen before but couldn’t immediately place. He fluttered around Holmes and Hodge like a magpie, snapping a napkin open for one, setting out silverware for the other, here then there in a chaotic dance. All while he chattered in a ludicrous Cockney accent that surely couldn’t be fooling anyone, except that Hodge seemed to be eating it up.
What a ridiculous person, James thought, just as he caught Hodge’s voice over the susurration of student conversation: “…your brother?”
Ah. Now that he looked, the similarity was obvious between their faces, despite the very different expressions they wore: The older man looked like he was working out how to make the younger’s death look like an accident, while the younger looked gleefully aware of the elder’s thoughts while knowing he’d never do it.
Brothers. James ignored the little pang behind his breastbone at the thought.
Which was shunted aside immediately as, baldly, in full view of the entire goddamn banquet hall, the scout lifted Hodge’s watch right out of Hodge’s vest and dropped it into the pocket of his apron.
James stifled a delighted gasp. No one else reacted, because no one else was watching.
He wanted to laugh as Holmes the younger continued whatever little show he was putting on for the express purpose of tormenting Mycroft. It became even harder when the scout dropped the pocket watch into Hodge’s coat, moments before Hodge began patting his vest in confusion. Mycroft gave his younger brother a vicious glare, which the scout met with a cheeky grin and the tipping of an imaginary hat.
Well, James thought. There was his in, and it was much more interesting than he’d even dared to hope for.
But even espionage had to abide by class schedules. James let the problem simmer on the backburner of his mind as he attended lectures on material he already knew in subjects he was already two terms ahead in through his own independent studies. It was torture, having to pretend he was at the same level as his classmates, but he’d already learnt that professors had a hard, arbitrary line between talent they would praise as brilliance and precocity they distrusted and disliked. Not to mention the hatred it earned him from his classmates, which was a tedious bother. Much easier to show up, look attentive and work on his own private endeavors under the desk.
Still, it was almost more than he could stand when Professor Thompson, teaching nearly verbatim from his book that James had already read, misquoted his own text. An open disk of radius centered at Y, James thought, despairing, and then nearly shit himself when someone said his very thoughts out loud.
It was the bloody scout again. Wearing an expression of polite detachment but holding a wastepaper basket in front of him like a shield, not looking at the polished Oxford students who glared at him for shaming his social betters in front of their teacher.
The scout slipped out when the bell rang as the students frantically copied down Thompson’s homework assignment. James lingered a moment longer than the others — it would take him only a minute to actually complete the assignment, no sense in not just doing it now — when the most amazing stroke of luck befell him, and the scout stepped in again.
Now. James closed his notebook and stood cautiously. He had moments to decide the best way to approach this perplexing man, to get into his confidence so he could work his way up to his brother. He studied the scout’s face as he approached, noticed the way his lips shaped around the equation he was reading — and solving — on the blackboard.
Why wasn’t he a student? The family clearly had money, and he was very obviously clever. And there was something hungry about the way he approached the board to teach himself. It was like he’d purposefully taken the most difficult route possible to something that would have been handed to him, if he’d simply followed the rules.
James felt like a magnet was drawing him forward. He plucked the chalk from the scout’s hand and solved the quintic, then asked with bright interest if Hodge’s pocket watch kept good time.
“They say it’s the unconscious desire of every thief to be caught,” he said, smiling. The charm offensive, at best; a blackmail threat, if one wanted to read between the lines. “That it’s the fear of incarceration that gives freedom its currency.”
Most of his peers would smile politely and deflect, or demure and excuse themselves, or, if they were Peregrine Dauvergne or his ilk, tell him to piss off.
The scout looked him dead in the eye and quoted The Art of War.
James burst out laughing. The world reoriented with a jolt. Oh, this was going to be better than interesting.
This was going to be fun.
He stuck out his hand — “James Moriarty” — and the hand that met his felt like flint meeting steel for the first time. One strike, and suddenly the dark was full of sparks.
“Sherlock Holmes.”
Eight hours, one fistfight, and most of a whiskey bottle later, the two boys stumbled breathlessly up the stairwell to James’ room. The rest of the dormitory was quiet, most having turned in for the night, but James buzzed with exhilaration: the lamplight smeared and soft from the alcohol, his knuckles still smarting from finally getting to punch Peregrine Dauvergne’s incredibly punchable face; victory and satisfaction humming in his chest.
And Sherlock.
Sherlock, who was fantastically drunk, tripping through the hall and apologizing to a hat stand; Sherlock, who threw his head back when he really laughed, cheeks and throat flushed rosy from the whiskey; Sherlock, who incredibly had not stopped talking to James since the mathematics classroom, and who, more incredibly, James had not stopped talking to either.
History. Politics. Maths. Religion. They leaped from subject to subject, one idea sparking another, a tangent haring off sideways and both veering gleefully to chase it down. James quoted John Locke, Sherlock fired back with Spencer, and a debate on social Darwinism somehow became wrestling over the state of the justice system, a subject difficult to get a good handle on because they were both giggling like naughty children on the verge of being caught for something they did not regret.
“Well, alright, if we really want to get into it, we have to go back to Plato —”
“Says who?!” James almost crowed, exasperated and delighted in equal measure.
“Says Professor Harding over in the classics department, based on the lecture I eavesdropped on last week.”
“Harding’s an arse and anyway, Plato also thought it was necessary to lie to the populace with some shite story about mixed metals, all to maintain social hierarchies, so forgive me if I don’t see him as a moral authority worth basing our entire legal system on —”
“I don’t fully disagree with you, James, I’m just saying it’s the precedent accepted by the Western canon, and if I recall correctly only one of us has been to prison recently.”
“And your lived experience makes you a scout and a barrister?”
“Well, I did try it, but the last judge didn’t take kindly to the lecture —” James had to prop himself up against his own door, key in the lock, unable to turn it for laughing. Sherlock reached out to cover his mouth with his hands, shushing but breaking into his own laughter, his palms warm against James’ lips, and James was drunk on more than just the whiskey now.
“Theory aside,” he said, finally getting the door open and herding Sherlock in in such a way that he didn’t upset any furniture, “if you actually look at the practical execution of Her Majesty’s justice, you’ll find that the law is not equitably applied across class or race, which means it is arbitrary, which means it can’t be justice, in which case the whole thing’s bollocks!”
“But the alternative is anarchy!”
“Let it be anarchy, then! Let it burn!” He grabbed Sherlock’s shoulders, shook them. “You grab a lantern, I’ll grab the cheapest booze I can find, we’ll torch the courthouse and be back in our beds before the porters are out for their first shift.”
“For my first shift, you mean,” Sherlock groaned. James knew he would suffer a terrific hangover in his first lecture block, if he was even sober by then, but he couldn’t find it in him to care. Not with his hands still on Sherlock’s shoulders and Sherlock’s face so close.
James was not one to sidestep a pleasurable opportunity. He liked good food, a good drink, a good fight and a good fuck, and he was not shy about wanting them or taking them when they were offered. He'd grown up content until he'd grown up hungry, and the change in circumstance taught him that the enjoyable parts of life could be easily snatched away. You had to build your security while you could, fight like a wild dog to protect it, and take whatever delights came your way because they might not do so again.
He had not felt that personal principle so keenly in a long time until tonight, with this extraordinary person in his room. He had not known he could feel this way — paced, matched, met, seen. James had long since despaired of ever finding anyone at Oxford worthy of the time and effort it took to win their company, and if they weren’t at Oxford, how could they be anywhere? Perhaps he was meant to be a solitary creature. Then suddenly, here was Sherlock. If James had known someone such as Sherlock Holmes existed, he would have missed him all his life til now.
It would have been deeply, horrifyingly embarrassing, except James was almost certain Sherlock felt the same way. Terrifically smart, hungry for knowledge, a brain that never forgot a single detail he’d seen — where would he find an equal? Certainly not in the school (or schools) he’d been kicked out of, which would explain why he’d grabbed onto James like a life raft all day. He’d absolutely been trying to impress James when he’d laid out those Chinese scrolls in the library.
James had meant to get Sherlock drunk and talking so he could ask about his brother. And James had, indeed, gotten plenty of very good Mycroft Holmes stories over the course of the night, though none of them helpful for his purposes. Sherlock kept getting distracted by more interesting subjects, and James kept getting distracted letting him, the two of them veering off course like Atalanta’s suitors chasing golden apples. James told himself he was biding his time as they kept drinking, kept talking, kept laughing. Now it was late, and he’d had his pleasure, and it was time for business.
But his gaze kept getting lured back to Sherlock’s mouth, the perfect bow of his upper lip, and…well, maybe there was time for just a little more pleasure.
Besides, some people were more talkative after they’d gotten laid.
He moved his hands along Sherlock’s shoulders, flicked his gaze to Sherlock’s eyes and then back down to his mouth.
“How to choose a moral authority, then?” Sherlock mused, his gaze aimed loosely somewhere over James’ shoulder.
“What?”
“Well, if you’re rejecting Plato.” Sherlock’s eyes snapped back to his, and they were —
Guileless. Still caught up in the conversation. Thoroughly, absolutely oblivious.
James had been prepared for this to go poorly if it turned out he’d misread Sherlock and his proclivities. It had gone poorly with a few other fellows around the school, though James quickly found enough blackmail to keep them quiet. It was, technically, illegal, but it was one of those things that were only as illegal as they were enforced. Most people legitimately did not care; you just had to be sure to keep it hidden from those who might, and who would, for example, rat out an Irish orphan to the dean and get him kicked out of school, and worse. James had known Sherlock for less than a day, and he didn’t think Sherlock would go that far, but he had at least been prepared for rejection.
He had not been prepared for his advance to simply bounce off Sherlock like rubber.
He said, experimentally, “Sherlock, you can’t just ask a man how he chooses a moral authority on the first date. At least take him to dinner first.”
Sherlock snorted with laughter, as though the joke were much funnier than it was (it wasn’t James’ best work but they were both quite sloshed). He did not seem to register the flirtation at all. James grinned, baffled and intrigued, and let his hands drop from Sherlock’s shoulders.
“Speaking of that first shift,” Sherlock said, and then hiccupped, and James’ laughter bubbled up again because it was, unexpectedly, adorable. “I really do need to get to bed. Smudger is a stickler for punctuality.”
“Your dedication to your craft is admirable.”
“Well, it would be a shame to lose this job after my brother went to all the trouble of getting it for me.” Sherlock stepped back and brushed off his jacket. “And right after I make such a diverting companion.” He smiled, warm and honest, and the words spread like honey in James’ chest.
Sherlock stepped toward the door. James affected a theatrical bow.
“Lovely making mayhem with you, sir.” Sherlock attempted the same motion and knocked his own hat off.
“I assure you, the pleasure was mine.” He scooped the hat up and did actually succeed in opening the door this time. “Good night. See you tomorrow.”
“See you tomorrow.”
The room was very quiet when Sherlock left. It could get a bit desolate in here, this small chamber with its sparse furnishings. James had brought very little with him to Oxford. Most of the personal touches he’d affixed to the walls were just study notes. But the cold little room seemed more welcoming now, having been warmed by the presence of a friend.
Not a friend.
James sat on his bed, scrubbed a hand down his face and tried to sober himself up. Sherlock was brother to someone who might be connected to a catastrophic weapon in development. If Mycroft was half as smart as Sherlock was, the prospect was frankly staggering, and the IRB was right to be concerned.
He had a job to do here. He could not forget that this was a job.
James washed his face and drank down most of the jug of water on his nightstand in the hopes of softening the looming hangover. He’d get to work tomorrow. There would be time tomorrow, and opportunity, because (and he couldn’t stop the stupid smile that kept creeping up on him at the thought) Sherlock had already said he’d see him again.
These were his thoughts as he collapsed into bed, asleep moments after he’d hit the mattress. Small wonder, then, that his first thought when he heard the banging on his door the next morning was that Sherlock had come to rouse him. Which was incredibly rude; if his hangover was half as bad as James’ own, he ought to be taking pity. Perhaps this was revenge.
The banging was very insistent. James opened the door.
It was not Sherlock.