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After Jim came back, Sherlock knew exactly what he wanted. The wooing which had lasted so long had grown a fruit. All Sherlock was able to do, was to watch piningly how the bomb-look –a-like roses were now fading away a petal after a petal.
And when Jim came back, they drank tea, which was sticky and blood red from all the bittersweet cherries, which were put with those tea leaves. And neither milk nor hundred spoons of sugar made it taste more bearable. It only made them look better. And yet, sugar and milk did the same thing to tea than a viscose did to Casmir. And to be honest, Sherlock didn’t whatsoever know if he wanted to drink his tea with so called sugar or with sweet milk to spoil his blood red-black poison. All he knew was that he wanted to drink his tea while it was still hot, he wanted to drink it now and he wanted to drink it without thinking further. So there was Jim to give words and promises like they were a tea pot which didn’t burn when you touched it. Oh, how he hoped he had known how fast and hard would be the inferno waiting just for him in the end of the thin, almost too thin, road of his.
”Tell me, Sherlock, how hard is to admit that you don’t know?” Jim asked softly, somehow so slyly that it made the tea burn on Sherlock’s tongue.
”I don’t know”, Sherlock replied with a roll of eyes. Jim grinned impishly - playfully. Soon he was forced to admit: ”That was clever. Very clever.”
And something in Jim’s voice told Sherlock that his knowledge or abilities mattered no more. Jim was in any case pulling him into the end by dancing and twisting, by manipulating it into something Sherlock would have wanted. And in that point, nothing mattered, not even the fact that all Jim wanted was to win, destroy. Kill that angel face from the stupidly naïve thoughts of Sherlock; make the man fall from his dreams just to show who was mastering the strings between them. And Jim was prepared to do anything to make those strings pull Sherlock down. He was prepared to go down with him, but only if it made sure that Sherlock would fall, fall and fall over and over again. Not to fly. Jim would win, even if Sherlock thought it was a cliché or idiotism. He would win.
And so Jim disappear again for a long time, his final words echoing the fact he would win.
*************
Just a month after Jim disappeared, John finally was ready to believe that Jim had actually disappeared from their life. And when that happened, were they, Dr. John Watson and Sherlock Holmes, sitting on their armchairs, watching how the dust was falling down after the running footsteps of yesterday.
“We should do this more”, John suddenly said with one of those very happy smiles of mitigation. Sherlock raised his head and then his eye brows at John with a question.
“You know, spend some normal and peaceful evenings together instead of we run all the time after random criminal around London”, the man in a jumper continued with a still smile and eyes glistening from happiness. Sherlock swore inside his mind palace and closed his eyes. He was swearing inside his head so loudly that each every of his brain cells were yelling shouting how stupid and naïve he had been. Shouting those words which had always ended with a soft hit in his head when he had been a child.
Of course. How has he been so blind? How he didn’t notice it? No one smiled like that to their friends, not even to best friends. Sherlock’s blood froze and he felt sick. No. It wouldn’t be- John wouldn’t. He gave John a look.
Yes. John would.
And just when John was looking Sherlock his mouth a bit open, ready to say those three words that Sherlock was so afraid of, Sherlock’s phone vibrated in his pocket. John shivered but realized to be quietly when Sherlock took his phone and read the message.
The taxi you see from the window. Now – x JM.
It wasn’t a question, it was an order, just like those Sherlock always send to John. And he couldn’t help but smile when he stood up from the armchair and walked into the front of the window. Soon the familiar dark blue coat and his scarf were in his hand.
”I’m going for a walk”, Sherlock shouted from downstairs, flew outside and closed the door. Drunk from adrenaline he dashed to the black taxi. Jim was waiting on a backseat. The cabbie was nowhere to be seen alive.
”Oh but Sherlock-dear, you didn’t waste any time”, Jim laughed softly like had won something. Sherlock didn’t even dare to reply. Not anymore, when the game had been on for so long time.
And in the taxi’s dark silence, Jim touched lightly Sherlock’s cheek with his fingers like a painter touches his painting, and then he leaned closer just to whisper dramaticly: ”How much do you think he’ll hate me now when I steal you completely? Maybe I should kill you already, isn’t that what is usually done after use? To whores I mean.”
Those words fell straight down on Sherlock’s spine and he was so lost with them, without realising any logical explanation to anything. For a tiny moment he even though he understood John.
*
Nights came and night went, but the messages didn’t stop for more than a tiny, tiny, tiny moments. And always when Sherlock had got used to his normal life without Jim, came a new message like the purpose of them was to torture Sherlock until he was mad. But he never told John about the messages, not about Jim. About nothing he told. He just ran like he was running for his life. Ran to those places Jim wanted him to come. And that was the thing that Sherlock was most ashamed of – that he was James Moriarty’s private pet and toy. But he couldn’t stop anymore. He didn’t remember how to stop. He didn’t, what was the most discordant, want to stop. He had already tasted that bitter wine which was so enchaining that no old drunk could resist it. And that was the only thing why Sherlock didn’t dare to tell John how down he had been pulled, not even when he already knew that there was still so much journey to fall. John didn’t know, didn’t understand and wouldn’t understand. Sherlock was more than happy to play with those lie-sceneries while he was still running after the text messages without any destination.
Not until the day Jim Moriarty finally disappeared from the front of his eyes, like Jim had always been not more than a gray-coloured lie. But the man’s face never disappeared from Sherlock’s mind. Not until Sherlock fell from higher and faster than he had never fell before.