Chapter Text
Six months before, James Moriarty would have been able to say quite confidently that he preferred a life of solitude. Perhaps he wasn't happy, per se, but he wasn't necessarily unhappy either. Truth be told, it was the most content he'd been in years.
Of course, that was before he met Sherlock Holmes and oh, oh James was like a moth to a flame. An addict to Sherlock's warmth. Burning the very tips of his wings every time he let himself get close enough to feel it.
Sherlock vexed James. He'd never met someone so inherently good. It scared James a bit, if he was being honest: he knew how to wrangle bad people, desperate people, people with secrets to hide. James understood how those people thought, but Sherlock? Sherlock was something else. James couldn't make deals with Sherlock because there was no reason for Sherlock to uphold his part of the deal. And yet he did. And when James followed Sherlock home like a stray dog, Sherlock let him. He let James see the cracks at the centre of his family and James thought for a few golden weeks that Sherlock might love him. Not in the same way that James loved Sherlock, but perhaps as a brother. Sherlock's mother, Cordelia, so like Sherlock, welcomed James, too. James wasn't so sure about Mycroft, and Mycroft likewise wasn't convinced of James' loyalty to Sherlock, but that was manageable. And Beatrice... she'd made it clear to James that she could see right through him, but James could handle that. After all, he was used to dealing with people with hidden secrets.
It didn't last. James wasn't stupid. He knew it wouldn't have lasted even if he hadn't shattered it. But of course, he did, because James could never just be happy with what he had. When Sherlock was working so hard to get rid of his father's chemical weaponry, James took it. He reached out and pocketed the formula, and just like that, James wrote off his friendship. He didn't tell Sherlock in as many words - trying to be cautious - but Sherlock knew. James could see it in the unhappy set of his lips, in this eyes, round with disappointment, with deeply seated hurt. Where James hid his pain, Sherlock tipped his chin up and defiantly painted it across his face, and it left James breathless.
James couldn't recall having felt guilty before then. He couldn't remember ever feeling guilty after, either. He locked the feeling up inside his chest and let it fester, turn black and blue and rotten.
James tried to avoid Sherlock on the train back from Constantinople, but there are only so many places to hide on a train and Sherlock cornered him in the last hour of the journey. James plastered a grin onto his face and forced himself to meet Sherlock's gaze. Sherlock wasn't smiling and his shoulders were stiff. "Mother would like to invite you to stay with us until your scholarship is reinstated."
James could have laughed at Sherlock's naivete. He was well aware that his scholarship wouldn't be reinstated; he was an Irish immigrant, associated with a plethora of crimes and a disgraced family. He wasn't going to tell Sherlock that, though.
"And you?" James asked, kicking his feet up on the seat opposite him.
Sherlock blinked, "And I what?"
"Is this invite coming from you, too?"
James watched as Sherlock's composure shattered slightly, his mouth twisting and his chest heaving shakily, and wondered briefly whether he'd pushed too hard. It was the closest either of them had come to acknowledging the bitterness that had grown between them. Sherlock turned away, "Yes."
James watched him leave, wishing he'd said something else. Even shouted at him. Anything else would have been better, would have told him more about Sherlock's state of mind, would have let James know how much his betrayal had cost Sherlock.
James was used to people hating him. He'd never particularly cared, before.
………………………………….
It isn't easy to live with someone who can't stand to look at you, James discovered.
He and Sherlock spent their days separately, ate separately as much as they could without arousing the suspicion of Sherlock's mother. They managed to almost completely avoid each other.
Sherlock spent most of his time outside. He had a vegetable garden tucked around the side of the Holmes' sprawling acres of country estate and James knew him to go for long runs when the weather roiled. James took the time to read through the books in the library. Other than in Oxford, he had rarely had access to books, and the long days proved fruitful. He found that he could get through three books a day if he put his mind to it, which he often did. It was a particularly effective way of distracting himself from Sherlock's tearful glances and clenched, controlled fists. One day, James thought, Sherlock was going to break and punch James. Knock him to the floor and stamp on ribs. James wouldn't fight. He'd relish it: he'd do the same if he'd been betrayed by someone he loved. Or at least, he would if he loved someone who wasn't Sherlock. James didn't think he'd ever be able to beat Sherlock up.
Three weeks in, Mycroft visited for dinner. Both him and Beatrice had been busy since they returned to England, Mycroft with trying to save his job, and Beatrice with (James assumed) setting up a profitable network of some kind. Cordelia bemoaned their absence on a daily basis, though James noticed that she never complained directly about her children.
James wondered if that was only because of how long she'd gone without them.
"You really must," she'd said when James tried to wriggle out of attending their family dinner, "you're one of us now, James."
Was he? Cordelia hadn't given any indication that she'd noticed the barrier between him and Sherlock, but she was cleverer and shrewder than any of her children gave her credit for. James was only glad that she hadn't asked. She'd had plenty of opportunity to: James ate breakfast lunch with her most days because Sherlock didn't eat breakfast and was usually out of the house during lunchtime and Cordelia insisted that she didn't like to eat alone. James didn't think he'd be able to lie to her if she asked him what he'd done.
James volunteered to cook the dinner because Cordelia wanted to pick Mycroft up from the station and they both agreed that Sherlock shouldn't be allowed to cook. He'd tried several times since Cordelia had revealed that the woman they'd previously employed for their cooking and housework was already employed elsewhere and those attempts had been spectacularly disastrous. Not that James minded cooking. It occupied his time and his thoughts well enough.
Mycroft arrived in a rain shower that soaked both him and Cordelia to the bone and James had to lend Mycroft a change of clothes because he didn't fit into Sherlock's. James gave Mycroft his second best suit because it was by far his most colourful and he didn't think he'd ever seen Mycroft wear anything loudly patterned before. Sherlock would hate it and James grinned at the thought.
"You do look terribly uncomfortable in those, brother dear." Sherlock commented when Cordelia called him for dinner. He hadn't been present to welcome Mycroft, though James didn't think he'd been outside either, and James knew he hated spending time in his bedroom. James shook his head. He didn't care. He shouldn't care. Why would it matter to James how Sherlock spent his time?
To distract himself, James decided that he'd have a wonderful evening making sport of Mycroft. "Indeed, 'brother dear', not quite your usual tailored silk. How will you possibly cope!"
"You're not our brother." Sherlock spoke quietly but with every sound clipped and sharpened. James sat back in his chair, wondering if it was too uncouth to swing on its back legs. He decided that he didn't care and let himself tilt back.
James was aware of Cordelia's shocked, crestfallen expression, her fork halfway to her mouth, knife limp in her right hand, and Mycroft's narrowed eyes, but he found that he couldn't look away from Sherlock. James looked at him, really looked, for the first time in weeks.
Sherlock didn't look well. His skin was pallid and he'd noticeably lost weight. His eyes, too, were bloodshot and tired, the skin around them bruised grey-purple. Was that... had James done that? He couldn't have, surely. Sherlock was stronger than that, Sherlock didn't care enough about James to let him affect him so much, not since the betrayal, not before, either. Unless he had.
James felt like he'd been punched in the gut. He wished he had been. It wouldn't be as painful.
He was a damned idiot.
James had been convinced that Sherlock hadn't cared enough, that he'd accepted and believed James' betrayal too quickly to have really cared. God, James hated himself.
"Sherlock..." James murmured. The first time he'd spoken directly to Sherlock since stepping foot back on English soil.
Sherlock shook his head, refusing to meet James' eyes. James watched as he took a deep breath, eyes fixed on his plate. Sherlock's hands were shaking.
James set his own cutlery down, sending Cordelia an apologetic glance that she didn't catch as he stood from the table. "Excuse me."
"James, dear, sit down and finish eating." He paused. There was a pleading note in Cordelia's voice that he hated, despised because this was another Holmes that he hadn't known cared for him, another Holmes who would cast him away sooner or later. Do I stay or go? James clenched his fists round the back of the chair, watched his knuckles turn white. Which Holmes to be loyal to? The man he had hurt more than he'd thought possible or the mother who had taken him in?
"James goes or I go." Sherlock was crying. He'd hidden his face effectively, head bowed and water glass raised to his mouth, but James could hear it in his voice. They all could, probably.
James hovered for a few more heartbeats, praying for Cordelia to say something, to say that this could be fixed, that James could stay, but of course, she said nothing. Sherlock was right, James wasn't his brother and he wasn't Cordelia's son either.
He left the room quietly.
…………………………………….
James escaped to the library. It was predictable, but nobody would look for him, so it hardly mattered.
He knew at once that someone else had been in the library. Several books were propped up at different angles than they had been when James had been in the room only a few hours before and there was a half empty mug of tea sitting cold on the windowsill.
Sherlock.
The library didn't belong to James. Technically, nowhere in the Holmes house did, though James had been in the spare room long enough for Cordelia to refer to it as his own. If Sherlock had been in the library, there was no reason for James to be offended or concerned, but he'd gone through the books. James didn't think he'd ever seen Sherlock reading before, though of course, James had only known Sherlock for a matter of weeks.
Why would Sherlock have gone through the books? James doubted that he'd been searching for one: fiction was arranged alphabetically by author's surname and the non-fiction by the Dewey Decimal System - which Sherlock had memorised - and every one of the twenty shelves had been disturbed. Why? Did Sherlock think that James was hiding something in the books? Did he think James had hollowed out Hamlet and folded the formula into its pages?
James allowed himself a hollow laugh, then returned to his room. It was similarly disturbed and James had to marvel at how thorough Sherlock had been. He was fairly certain that Sherlock had been through the pockets of every piece of clothing James owned.
Oh Sherlock, you could just have asked.
The thought surprised James, but it was true. If Sherlock had asked, James would have handed over the formula. Perhaps not without the token challenge, but he would have given it up for Sherlock.
Anything for Sherlock.
James' fingers went to his chest, where the formula rested in the inside breast pocket of his shirt. He could destroy it. He could light a match and set it on fire right there in his room. He could march downstairs and wave the flaming paper in Sherlock's face and demand Is this enough for you? over and over again. But he wouldn't. James was far too masochistic for that.
He slipped the formula out and unfolded it, letting his eyes slip over the lines and the integrals and roots and exponents, committing it all to memory.
It was with the careful sense of one who knows he won't see the room again that James returned to the library. He deliberated for a few moments, scanning over the titles, before pulling The Merchant of Venice from the shelf. James unfolded the formula and gently slid it into the final page. 'I pray you, give me leave to go from hence; I am not well. Send the deed after me and I will sign it.' whispered Shakespeare. James' lips pulled up in an approximation of a smile. He doubted that Sherlock would check the library again, but if he did, James hoped he would see the irony in such a quote.
James snapped shut the book and set it back in its place. He didn't look back as he left the room. James wasn't a nostalgic person and didn't plan on spending time dwelling on unimportant losses. The books he didn't read would remain unread.
James packs quickly. He doesn't own much because he doesn't need much and every time he has to move somewhere else, he's grateful for that. He sits on his bed, which he makes neat even though Cordelia will probably strip and wash the sheets, and waits until he hears Sherlock's door closing along the hall. He gives it another ten minutes, just to be careful, then stands, swinging his bag over his shoulder.
He took the stairs slowly, trying to remain as silent as possible without looking like he was trying to tiptoe. The bottom step creaked loudly, like firecrackers going off under James' feet, and he winced. He'd walked over that step multiple times a day for weeks and never thought twice about the noise it made. Still, he supposed there wasn't much point in staying quiet after that and so he didn't bother disguising the fall of his feet as he crossed the hallway to the door. Deep down, a small, treacherous part of James wanted someone to hear him and stop him. Tell him that Sherlock didn't want James to leave, that he hadn't meant what he said. James wasn't one to indulge fantasies; they just brought more pain in the long run. James smiled humourlessly to himself. Self-sabotage had always been one of his favourite hobbies.
It wasn't a fantasy, though, that Sherlock hadn't meant for James to leave. He didn't want James sitting at the family dinner, he didn't want to see James, but Sherlock would never throw James out the house. Sherlock had his flaws and one of them was being too kind. Sherlock would never send James away but sometimes a quick, sharp break was better. Nobody can process grief while the person they're grieving is still in its dying throes and James suspected that the same was true of... whatever it had been between him and Sherlock.
James was jolted from his thoughts as he approached the door, "You're leaving."
His head snapped up. Cordelia was sitting in the gloom of the sitting room without any lamps lit, a shawl around her shoulders. James left his bag next to the door and went to join her, sitting across from her in the shadows. "I thank you for your hospitality, but I really must insist on leaving."
"Yes. I agree."
James' heart sank. Cordelia's voice was cold and impersonal and it stung sharply. It hurt almost more than losing Sherlock had: the moment James had taken the formula, he'd known that he'd lose Sherlock's friendship, a vague understanding which had grown heavy and all too real over time, but he'd expected it and James, as much as he hated himself for it, was relieved that it hadn't hurt quite as much as he'd expected. He hadn't expected Cordelia's anger though. Maybe he'd become too comfortable with her not knowing how much he'd hurt Sherlock, maybe he'd thought that she already knew and welcomed James in anyway, James didn't know, but her voice lanced through him more painfully than he'd braced for.
"Sherlock and I had an interesting conversation," Cordelia continued, "and I don't think you should see him again."
"What did he tell you?" James asked, trying not to let his panic seep in. The formula, his brain chanted. James prayed to a God he'd stopped believing in that that wasn't the case.
Cordelia tipped her chin. "Nothing material. Whatever it is you've done, James, he's protecting you."
Of course he is, James thought. He wouldn't do anything to hurt me, even after everything. "I know."
James met Cordelia's gaze. He recognised a strength in her that he had never seen in Sherlock, a strength that James knew came from fighting against the confines of boxes that the world placed around you. Cordelia Holmes, the wife, the madwoman, the widow and James Moriarty, Irish immigrant and scoundrel. They made a right pair, the two of them. In the silence, the ticking of the old grandfather clock in the corner seemed to slow. James stared unblinkingly at Cordelia and silently counted down from sixty, daring her to say something.
She remained silent.
"Mrs Holmes," James murmured, "I'll see myself out."
An hour later, on the first train he could catch from the village, James realised that Mycroft still had his second best suit.