Toxicology Pt. 1
Title: Toxicology
Fandom: BBC Sherlock
Pairing: John/Moriarty
Rating: PG-13/R for gore, cursing, inexplicit sexual content
Prompt: Sherlock breaks John's heart. Moriarty is there to pick up the pieces and introduce John to the London criminal underground.
Wordcount: 13,906 (total)
Other: written for an anon for the Sherlock kinkmeme. You can find the original prompt and fill here.
You can also find a Chinese version of pt. 1 here, translated by wanderingteddy.
The boxes were damn heavy, and John was tired of hauling them down the rickety flight of stairs to the street. The living room was dead silent when he passed by, but then, what did he expect? Fanfare, pleading, some sort of loud and weepy goodbye? Sherlock wasn’t going to apologize, and John was past the point of caring.
It was dull and grey outside, and it might have been poetically fitting if it wasn’t usually that way in London. He let the door swing shut behind him a little louder than necessary, then gave the cabbie a hand loading the boxes into the car. It was kind of sad, really - he didn’t even have enough to need to open the boot up. John had always lived and packed light, and after Afghanistan, that had seemed to mean that he lived light enough that he could get up and flee at a moment’s notice.
For a while, he had almost thought that he’d found a place to put roots down. But then, Sherlock was right, and he was a blind idiot.
“Now I know this might be a novel concept to you, but people going out generally don’t insult their significant others to within an inch of their life.”
“Well, it’s hardly my fault that you can’t see what’s in front of your nose!”
“That’s not the point, Sherlock! You don’t have to pretend like I’m a genius, but I’m not supposed to run out of fingers for how many times you’ve called me an idiot today!”
“You’re the one always going on and on about honesty. The least I can do is be candid.”
He climbed into the back seat next to the box that had the leaves of his potted plant poking out the top and buckled his seatbelt. A muttered address to the cabbie up front, and then they were off and rolling. The door of 221B Baker Street disappeared out the rear window. John didn’t watch it go.
They pulled up at a hotel, hardly a fancy place, but it was just about all John could afford at the moment. He had been working extra hours at the hotel to pull in some extra income, and now that he wasn’t working cases at all hours of the night with Sherlock, he could actually manage to stay awake for the shifts. They unloaded the boxes onto the sidewalk and John passed the cabbie a few bills, just enough to cover the fare and a mildly respectable tip.
After the cabbie drove away, it took John four trips to get all the boxes up to his room on the fourth floor. His key was old and worn, and he had to wrench it just right to the left for it to open. The room was at least habitable. It was obviously coming on to its years, and it was Spartan, but it was clean and it had both a window and a heating unit, so that was good. John knew that if he cared to look in the bathtub, there would not be a small colony of dead frogs chilling on buckets of ice. The thought was simultaneously a relief and a tragedy.
“The least - the least you could do?! No, no, I’m afraid that’s not it. I go to the shop, I do the tea, I cook the food, I get the takeout, I do the laundry, I clean up your messes, I even got you your shipping of bodily remains permit, and the least you can do is be candid about my idiocy?!”
“It’s not as if going to the shop is such an excellent measure of IQ. If you hadn’t noticed, I’ve been a bit busy around here with important things.”
“Oh, I see.”
“Do you really.”
“I’m not important. That’s frightfully clear.”
With a sigh, he arranged the flowerpot on the too-small desk by the window. The tepid sunlight coming through the glass might be enough to keep it alive. At this point, John couldn’t help but feel that it was on its own for that one. He could barely be counted on to keep himself together, let alone support a single living thing depending on him. It was a blessing he’d never decided to have kids.
He unpacked his toothbrush in the bathroom and his clothes in the closet before sitting on the bed The corners of the sheets were crisp, tucked in neatly at the edges. The bedding was harsh, starched for appearances rather than comfort. A glance around the room proved rather beige. The walls were the unimpressive beige that hotels thought were unoffensive, the furniture was a weak sort of beige wood, the bedding was cream-gone-beige from the wash, and the lone piece of cheap auction-art on the wall showed a tea-colored café scene. He was in a beige hell.
It wasn’t a hard decision to grab his wallet and hike to the nearest pub. He didn’t need to be shelling out for a cab when he was already paying out the nose for a shitty hotel, not to mention that he could use the exercise. The faintly distant taste of smoke in the air and the amber lights warming the wood paneling made the place feel like more of a home than it really should have. John settled down on a stool near the end and ordered a pint from a bored-looking bartender. As he sipped and watched the minuscule bubbles dance their way to the top of the glass, he wondered exactly what he’d done to end up here.
“Now you’re misconstruing everything I’m saying.”
“Am I? Because that’s not how it looks to me. I can be your boyfriend, or I can be your nanny, or I can be the guy you put down to make yourself feel better, but you only get to pick one, Sherlock. And I’m not so convinced that we’re in agreement about which one you’re looking for.”
“You knew exactly what I was like when we started this - “
“Yeah, but somewhere between you rescuing me and me killing a man for you, I kind of got the impression you actually cared. My mistake.”
When his glass was beginning to run low, his phone beeped in his pocket. He nearly didn’t bother to look, because all of his texts were from Sherlock anyway, and he was hardly in the mood to listen to that. But eventually he did tug it out and flip it open, only to discover that it wasn’t Sherlock at all.
Didn’t take you for the emo type, the text read.
John frowned at the screen for a moment, but the number was unlisted and although he was clever, he wasn’t Sherlock, and he couldn’t figure out at a moment’s notice not only the sender’s name, but the colors of the shirt they were wearing.
Who is this? he sent back, pausing for a moment before sending.
Don’t recognize me now that I’m not chirping in your ear? Really, I’m hurt.
Moriarty. John realized that he should have been afraid. Moriarty was texting him, God knew how he even got his number at all. He knew where he was and that he was drinking and feeling sorry for himself. That meant he was watching him somehow; could he hack into the CCTV feeds? But as frightening as the situation should have been, all John felt was weariness. He was tired of these games. All he wanted to do right now was to drink another pint, and if Moriarty had shown up at the pub just then and there, John would have told him that in person. He might have followed it up with a right hook to the nose just for good measure, he admitted to himself, but that was only reasonable, and after that he would have left well enough alone and gone back to his glass.
I don’t know why you’re bothering. I’m not a threat to you anymore. As he sent it off, he knew it was true. Sherlock was the one who had hunted down Moriarty in the first place. Sherlock was the one Moriarty had sought out personally as his only truly capable adversary. John had just been the bait, one more pawn in the great game of Fuck My Life that someone had apparently signed John up for without his knowledge.
His phone beeped again. He flipped it open idly with one thumb.
True, it said simply. God, even a murderous lunatic was agreeing with the pointlessness of his existence. Bang-up successful life, John. Just right on.
He stared at the phone for the next five minutes, wondering if he should respond and morbidly curious if Moriarty would text him again if he didn’t say anything. Nothing happened. After a strange look from the barkeep, he finished off his beer, paid, and took the long hike back to his hotel.
He still kept his pistol on him, just in case. Part of him thought it was ridiculous. He wasn’t working with Sherlock anymore, dashing around London after criminals and actually needing a weapon for self-defense. But the other part of him was just so used to having it around, between Afghanistan and Sherlock, that it felt like he was missing a limb when he went out without it. And he just knew that the one day he would need it would be the day he decided to finally leave it at the hotel.
So he simply pretended that he was a normal man, going to the shop, going to work, going back to the hotel to look through apartment listings. And it was funny how quickly he’d really thought of it as pretending. He’d been a little different when he’d come back from overseas, and living with Sherlock had been like tossing oil on a flame. He was still very good at getting along with normal people, but it always felt like he was a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Get the broccoli. Get the instant noodles. Smile at the woman with the pram. Nod to the man at the cash register. Pretend like he hadn’t shot a man in cold blood. Pretend like he hadn’t exchanged text messages with a murderer who happened to take him hostage a year ago.
He was excellent at pretending.
The papers said something about a new cocaine smuggling ring; they mentioned Sherlock Holmes in passing, but it seemed that the last three attempted busts had been washouts. John was mildly surprised for a little while, simply because Sherlock was usually anything but consistently wrong, so the case must have been different. But he had to force himself to stop thinking about it like that; he would start to want in on the case, and wanting in on the case meant calling up Sherlock, and he would sooner gnaw off his own leg.
Grisly image, that. Was that from Sherlock’s influence, or did he naturally have that streak of red in him?
He found himself feeling strangely flat. The adrenaline was gone. He’d been lost without it after the war, and now he was just as adrift after Sherlock. He volunteered for some emergency room surgical shifts to make up for it, elbow-deep in blood, sewing up internal bleeds and pulling out bullets. Saving lives. It did help. He could feel himself brightening up a little bit on the shifts, walking a little straighter when the others on his team were beginning to droop from the wear-and-tear of all the violence they were swimming in. It got to the point where the Chief of Medicine asked him to switch to permanent emergency surgical rotations, simply because it always seemed to bring the best out of him, when it brought the worst out of others. John accepted, of course, because John liked making people happy and helping the hospital run smoothly. John also liked the feel of it, but there wasn’t anything wrong with that.
He was settled on the couch in the doctor’s lounge when the news flicked to the image of DI Lestrade. An attractive, if rather plastic, newswoman was holding a microphone out to him with a perfected concerned look. Her teeth were hideously white. “So, Detective, now that your preliminary leads are out, do you have any new plans?”
Lestrade looked uncomfortable. “We’re consulting all possible sources to find a new suspect. I assure you, we’re doing all we can to find this killer.”
“I’m sorry, killer? I thought you were investigating a drug ring.”
“We are. But we now have reason to believe that the drugs have been laced with poison and are being sold deliberately.”
“Oh, dear!” Her incredibly smooth forehead couldn’t quite manage the wrinkles necessary for a completely shocked expression.
“But as I said, we’re pursuing all available leads. We’ll find him.”
“I see. Well, Marissa, back to you.”
The screen flipped to another attractively plastic woman, this time a blonde, who smiled widely at the camera and promised a full update on the football matches. John reached for the remote, but before he could grab it, his phone beeped in the pocket of his scrubs.
That one was more fun than a barrel of monkeys!
John stared at it for a minute in disbelief. He was going crazy. That was why all of this was happening. His fingers were clicking out another response before he even knew what he was doing. That was you. You’ve got the drug ring poisoning people.
Ding ding ding! Gold star! The doctor is IN!
Why are you telling me this? This was the point when he should have just ignored the texts and moved on with his life. Maybe after getting a new phone number. But he had always been a curious man, and somehow this felt more like Moriarty was toying with him than threatening him.
Your ex is no fun at all to taunt now that you threw his ass to the curb
John raised his eyebrows slightly. Was that so. He suspected it wasn’t out of grief.
“So you’ve had it with me, is that it? Doctor John Watson, finally giving up on the freak?”
“You can’t make me into the bad guy here, Sherlock! I’ve done everything for you! All I asked for was a little bit of honest respect!”
“God, you sound insipid.”
“I’m sorry that I’m not interesting enough for you! But you know what? You won’t have to deal with my - my vapid remarks any longer!”
“Good! Perhaps I can finally put myself to real use, then!”
“You - Fine! Have a wonderful fucking life!”
No, it definitely wasn’t grief.
So you’re taunting me instead? THAT makes sense. He was back-talking the crime lord of London. Back-texting the crime lord of London? Something was wrong with him. Something was very wrong with him, most likely a severe lack of a will to live to see tomorrow. He should have that looked at.
Next best thing. He’s entirely lost his sense of humor
Well, he had his head on a plate already. Moriarty was watching him, he’d tracked down his phone number, and he was interested enough in him to be texting. If he was going to die, he may as well have a few parting shots along the way. You say that like he had one to begin with.
The reply was nearly instantaneous that time. LOLLERCOASTER! True dat :D It was so ridiculous in so many ways that it tore a startled laugh out of John unexpectedly. There were more things wrong with that text than he could count on all his fingers and toes, but that was most of why it was so hilarious. He thought of Moriarty, with his pasty white face and over-emphatic eye-widening, saying it, and he couldn’t help but chuckle again.
He slid his phone away and went back to work with a smirk that made the nurses smile at him a little wider.
After that, it was all sort of downhill. It was remarkably easy to forget that the somewhat melodramatic, always a little off-kilter texts that pinged into his phone were from a crazed killer who had only recently strapped a bomb to his chest and tried to blow him into smithereens. John would have thought that it would be harder to forget that sort of thing, but strangely, it wasn’t. Moriarty didn’t sign his texts, and he certainly didn’t talk about the Pool Incident. Apart from the occasional tangential references to the various crimes he and his syndicate were committing, it was almost like John was talking to a normal person. Someone he’d met off the street. Perhaps he’d run into them at the shop, when they’d reached for the same box of cereal. Perhaps he’d accidentally smashed into their bicycle while driving home, exhausted, from work. Perhaps he had simply smiled across the room and made a funny face.
John wasn’t really sure, but it was fun. And it was harmless, wasn’t it?
He hadn’t expected Moriarty to actually show up.
He was filling out a few release forms at the front desk when Moriarty sidled in as if he belonged. He wasn’t dressed in his Jim from IT costume, but nor was he all spiffed up in his suit from the Pool Incident. He looked… startlingly normal. Slacks over trainers, a fitted tee under a casual sport jacket, and a disarming grin on his face.
John very nearly dropped the folder he was holding, catching himself only at the last instant to prevent himself from looking like a total fool.
Moriarty sauntered over, hands stuffed loosely in his pockets. “Afternoon,” he said, as if nothing was wrong with that. And part of John, the objective, logical part of him, told him that for all Moriarty was concerned with, there probably was nothing wrong with it. After all, he’d just spent the last three weeks trading texts with the man. It wasn’t necessarily a leap to assume that it would be okay to see him in person.
And yet, the other part of John, the part that remembered when Moriarty had drugged him, had tied a bomb to him, pushed a bug into his ear, and made him dance like a monkey in front of Sherlock - that part of John thought there was rather a crucial difference indeed between texting Moriarty and seeing him face-to-face. So that part of John wasn’t at all surprised when he only managed a partial response of,
“What- what the hell are you doing here?!”
“Would you believe me if I said I needed a checkup?”
“No,” John said flatly, in a tone that brooked no argument. When was it exactly that it had become okay for him to disagree with a psychopath to their face?
“Nahhhhh,” Moriarty replied, with a strange sort of grin. “Didn’t think so. Worth a try!”
For a moment, John could only stare at him. This wasn’t happening.
Apparently, it was. Moriarty put two hands on the counter and hopped up onto it, legs dangling off the side where he began to swing them aimlessly. “So this is where you work. No wonder you’re still bored.”
“I’m not bored. And you’re not supposed to be here. Why are you here, again?”
Moriarty seemed to have become selectively deaf since the last time John saw him, because he skimmed over the last question entirely. “Don’t be silly! Everyone’s allowed in a hospital!”
“Except possibly you, because I suspect you’ve got about fifty wanted counts on you.”
“Nope!” He popped the ‘p’ enthusiastically, beaming. “Not a one of ‘em sticks. See, I’m actually good at the whole crazy-murderer-for-hire life path, that’s the rub.” He said it with the same sort of voice a normal man would have used to talk about the latest football scores, dismissively and factual. After he finished, he glanced around the waiting room, where patients sat silently, pacing and waiting for their own prognoses or their family’s. “Cheese on rice, it’s quiet. Who died around here?”
“Uh… lots of people Lots of people have died around here, and more are probably going to, so they’re all a little stressed.”
Moriarty took a long sniff in, loudly, his nose wrinkling. “Riiiiiight.” He drummed his fingers on the countertop. “Well. Sucks to be them.”
John rolled his eyes, snapping the clip on his clipboard shut and stuffing a file into the outbox. “Look, since you still haven’t told me why you’ve decided to show up in the middle of my shift at the hospital for no apparent reason, I’m going to go back to work.”
That failed spectacularly to produce any sort of real answer from Moriarty, not that he’d really expected it to. Instead, Moriarty just smiled crookedly. “You know, most people would be calling the cops right about now. But you’re just chatting. You’re even cracking jokes at me. Why is that?”
“Yeah, well, if you were that interested in killing me, you would have done it a while ago. We’re in the middle of a crowded hospital, which doesn’t seem like your style for ambushes. And besides, if you did try anything, I’m trained in hand-to-hand combat and I’m armed. Since I don’t see any of your convenient thugs hanging around here to back you up, I could probably take you down with me. And I don’t really feel like dealing with the cops today, so, there it is. I guess I’m just not most people.” He tucked his clipboard under his arm, raising his eyebrows at the crime lord perched on the counter before him. He felt particularly unimpressive, making that sort of speech while dressed in slightly stained scrubs and old trainers, but once he had started, it was kind of hard to stop. And despite the strangeness of making that statement, once it had left his mouth, he felt that it was oddly true.
Moriarty laughed, a keening sort of giggle, holding his steepled hands in front of his mouth, completely unable to contain his childish delight. “Aren’t you just! Here you are, threatening me casually with a concealed-carry weapon - tell me, Doc, is it even legal for you to bring that in here?”
The moment of stiff silence from John was a most definite ‘no.’ He had thought a moment ago that it wasn’t possible for Moriarty to smile any wider. He was wrong.
“And an illegally carried weapon! Oh, this is beautiful. Just beautiful.”
John looked around awkwardly at the waiting room only a stone’s throw away to make sure nobody was hearing their conversation. It appeared that Moriarty wasn’t causing enough of a scene to get a fine, upstanding doctor with an illegally carried gun arrested, though.
“How about we cut the games and you tell me why you’re here?”
“Fine, fine, ruin my fun. It’s not nice to rain on somebody’s parade; didn’t your mother ever tell you that?” John cast him a significant look, eyebrows down, and turned to leave. Moriarty stopped him just before he did by continuing, “I just wanted to ask - are you bored now?”
John stopped, stilled for a moment. Moriarty laughed behind him and hopped off of the counter. “Just some food for thought, Doc.” And with that, he sauntered out of the hospital, leaving John standing in the hall.
The chilling part of it was, Moriarty was right. This was the best he’d been since leaving Baker Street.
The next text came a full week later. John thought about ignoring it. He managed to get through an entire shift and a half without looking. He did a lovely emergency appendectomy, he repaired a punctured lung, pumped a suicidal woman’s stomach, and sewed up two young idiots that had gotten into a knife fight. But the entire time it felt like his mobile was burning a hole in his pocket. It weighed on his hip, such a warm heaviness that he finally gave up and flipped it open.
The text wasn’t anything important. They usually weren’t. It was a snarky joke about the chip and pin machines, and John hated the chip and pin machines, wanted to smash a cricket bat through them sometimes, and that meant that it wasn’t his fault when he texted back.
It felt distantly like he was signing on to something, but didn’t know what exactly it was.
The next Monday, he walked into the doctor’s lounge, nodding a brief greeting in passing to the male nurse lounging on the couch as he headed for the fridge. It was only as he was reaching for the fridge door handle that he did a double-take and whirled around.
“You!”
Moriarty grinned, not a male nurse at all, but he had gotten his hands on a pair of scrubs in the ubiquitous sickly mint green shade that they all wore, and he had kicked his heels up on the coffee table. At John’s outcry, he smiled and wiggled his fingers in a little wave.
“Me!” He rose to his feet, pointing at his chest with both hands.
“You’re… impersonating a male nurse.”
“Spot on!”
“… Why are you impersonating a male nurse.”
Moriarty widened his eyes comically. “To get into the staff lounge, of course! Why else?”
“And you wanted to get into the staff lounge to… see me. You could have just found me at the front desk like you did last time.” And John knew that was the wrong answer. The right answer was to tell Moriarty that he wasn’t to see him again, period. He wasn’t sure when he’d started supplying all of these hideously wrong answers, but it all seemed to happen when he was around Moriarty.
“But where’s the fun in that? I’ll tell you - nowhere! Because that’s no fun at all! Look, I’ve even got a little stethoscope, and - one of these things, whatever they are.” He held up an otoscope, flicking on the light that funneled through the tiny point at the end. “Funny… light poke thing.” He held it up to John, pointing it into his ear and peering through the lens at the other end. John batted his hand away.
“It’s an otoscope. A pneumatic otolaryngoscope, to be precise.”
“Otoscope! Otoscope, otoscope, otoscope, funny name, from the Greek ‘oto’ for ear. You doctors, always with the Greek and Latin.”
And if John was momentarily stunned by the reference, he would have liked to think that he recovered rather admirably. Sometimes with all of the text-speak and the scrubs and finger wiggles, he forgot that Moriarty was enough of a genius to take on Sherlock Holmes and live to tell the tale. An insane genius, but a genius nonetheless.
“Yes,” he said slowly, drawing out the vowel sound as his mouth caught up to his brain. “That would be it, yeah.”
“And you know these sorts of things, because you’re a good doctor.”
John paused, once again struck speechless. It was funny, really. Moriarty had tried to kill him, but he was still quicker to compliment him than his ex-boyfriend had ever been. He wasn’t sure what that said about his life and his relationships.
“Whiiiiich brings me to my point!” Moriarty passed a glance to John briefly. “Yes, yes, I have a point, I know you’re big on points.” He punched John’s arm, a little harder than necessary, but in a sort of friendly, manly way. The slightly off way he did it made John think that it was something he’d seen people do on television, but hadn’t actually tried on anyone before John. “I want to hire you!”
There must have been a record for shocking Doctor John Watson the most times in under a minute, because Moriarty was clearly racing for the gold on that count. “You - you want to what?!”
“You can be my doctor. Private practice. Just me and the boys.” He cast a slow look around the staff lounge with a critical gaze. “Be a sight more interesting than this dump.”
“You want me to be your personal physician.”
“Yep. Considering my line of work, it’s rather handy to have someone around at all times that won’t go running off to the police.”
Oh, God, John thought.
“Oh, God,” he said.
“Is that a yes?” Moriarty said cheerfully.
“That’s an ‘I can’t believe you’re honestly suggesting that I turn to a life of crime,’ that’s what that is!”
“You wound me!” He clasped both hands over his heart in a melodramatic pose. “You wouldn’t be a criminal. Accessory, at best. You’d just be providing your Hippocratic services to a very… specific clientele.”
“Specific clientele. By that you mean you and your henchmen.”
“Oooh, henchmen, always loved that word! Right up there with ‘minions.’ It just tastes nice when you say it, doesn’t it?”
“What exactly makes you think I would ever agree to that?”
“First,” he said, counting off his points on his fingers, “it’s loads of fun what we get up to. I mean it, really, loads. It’s like every day is Christmas! Second, I pay way better than this place ever will. That flat you’ve been living in is kind of cra~amped,” he said in a sing-song voice. “Third, criminals get dental, or didn’t you know? Fourth, did I mention every day is Christmas? Well, Christmas with explosions. The best kind of Christmas!” He laughed, tucking his hands into his pockets and rocking back and forth on his heels.
“Right. Look. I’m going to go back to work,” John said, pointing to the door of the staff lounge, “and you are going to go back to… work… and both of us are going to forget that you asked me this, alright?”
Moriarty was silent for a moment, watching him with an eerily piercing stare. For a moment, John thought he was going to say something insightful, but then Moriarty just shrugged and clapped him on the shoulder. “Well! You know how to reach me!” And with that he popped the otoscope back in his white lab coat pocket and left.
John sighed as the door swung shut. It took him a minute to remember that he had come in here to fetch his lunch, not just to talk to strangely curious criminals. As he sat down at the particleboard table and munched on the same peanut-butter and jelly sandwich he’d eaten for lunch every day for the last year and a half, he reassured himself that he’d made the right choice.
It was funny, though. Once he actually had options, as insane as they were, it felt like he was seeing his life with new eyes. When he woke up in the morning at the crack of dawn to shut off his blaring alarm, he thought, I could wake up later if I wasn’t working for the hospital. When he spread the peanut-butter and jelly out on his usual wheat bread in the morning and bagged it for lunch, he thought, I could actually have time to eat a real lunch. When he greeted the same harried, frustrated nurses at the front desk with a smile, he thought, I wouldn’t have to pretend I like them. When he sat in the break room, listening to his coworkers talk about the latest soap opera, he thought, I wouldn’t have to listen to this load of crap. When he read over his patient summaries for the same old broken bones and internal traumas, he thought, It could be so much more interesting than this.
He’d been happy with this life before. Or, if he was being honest with himself, he’d at least tolerated this life before. He’d been content. Ish. He would have been able to stand doing this for the next few decades of his life. But that was when he didn’t have a choice in the matter. Now he did, and suddenly it was like the veil had been ripped off of his life, and all the gold and glory was revealed as nothing more than piles of dust and shit.
The thought occurred to him that Sherlock would never approve of this new career path.
But then, they were over and done with, and that bridge was burned, so what was stopping him?
Does the offer still stand?
His phone pinged to life only two minutes later. You bet your bottom dollar it does! :)
What was he getting himself into?
He watched the keys on his phone for what felt like ages before asking, What do I do now?
You leave it to me. Duh
So he did. He went back to work as usual, cutting and sewing and filling out endless paperwork. On Thursday, his supervisor called him aside.
“John, I just got your letter of resignation. I’m so sorry to hear that we’re losing you!”
“I’m… sorry to be leaving you?” he managed. He hadn’t written a letter of resignation.
“Oh, aren’t you sweet. I’m sure they can put you to good use in Cardiff. I know that we’ll be missing a wonderful doctor, though!”
“Dr. Millinger, you’re too kind. I know I’ll miss all of you, too. You’ve been great colleagues.”
She smiled warmly at that and patted his arm. “Let me know if there’s ever anything I can do for you.”
“Of course. Thank you.” With that, he stole away from her office before he could be called upon to bluff further. His fingers found his phone blindly in his pocket.
Am I actually going to Cardiff?
Of course not. But now you get a farewell party
John laughed a little. That was true. And with an official resignation, nobody would be asking questions about any disappearances. His phone beeped again with a follow-up message. Save me a piece of cake! lol
They held the farewell party two weeks later. John had spent the interim saying goodbye to coworkers and realizing exactly how little he’d actually liked spending time around them. It was a relief, as he smiled and nodded and told them that he’d miss them, to know that he only would have to deal with them until his last day. Then he would never have to see one of their faces again. There was a God. The party went the way most office parties tended to - lots of cake, lots of fake goodbyes, lots of bad music, and a fair heaping of drunk coworkers. He managed to slip out halfway through by pretending he had a phone call. He took a piece of cake with him, as promised, and drove home.
As he pulled out onto the road, the thought occurred to him that he was unemployed now. He’d quit the socially acceptable job he had. He was now a freeloader on the dregs of society, and if anyone knew the job he was about to actually take, he would probably be arrested.
But when he rolled down the driver’s side window and felt the wind in his hair, all he did was laugh.
It wasn’t until noon the next morning when there was a knock on the door. He put down his newspaper and opened it up to reveal two men in discreet, but practical dark clothing. If he looked carefully, he could just make out the silhouette of shoulder holsters beneath their coats. One of them nodded and greeted him respectfully by his title of Doctor, and they led him out to a car waiting on the street. John had been expecting something sketchy, a suspicious looking white or black van like they always had in the movies, but it was only an unobtrusive four-door stationwagon. It was probably for the best. Moriarty knew what would make his men blend in, and it was tolerably crappy cars that didn’t look like a pedophile would be behind the wheel.
They drove him through town, and John was pleased to note that nobody blindfolded him or tinted the windows. He could easily track their motion, and he made a few mental notes to key landmarks in case he had to find it again. They parked outside of an electronics repair shop. They slipped through the racks of screen protectors and surge strips to an ‘employees only’ door at the back. Behind it was an incredibly usual staff room, filled with the expected overly priced snack machine, grungy fridge, and horrifying inspirational posters. The tall one who had greeted him swiped an ID card in the vending machine and punched a series of numbers. The machine rolled several feet to the left on a silent pneumatic motor, revealing a doorway that the short one unlocked.
John whistled low under his breath. It was so Scooby Doo of them, hidden doorways and secret code entries. It felt very Moriarty.
They headed down the hall, locking the door behind them. John could see the little line of light at the bottom of the doorframe disappear as the snack machine returned to its position. The décor on the other side of the break room was suddenly anachronous. The floors were carpeted. The walls were painted an attractive shade of sage green, and instead of the cheap, flickering fluorescents from outside, there were muted, recessed lights in intervals along the ceiling. They finally emerged into an office, lined with shelves, drawers, and bookcases of every shape and size. Several doors led off to who-knew-where, as they were unmarked. There was a small TV on one side of the room playing an old roadrunner cartoon on mute, the coyote silently pitching off of a cliff and landing with a cloud of dust on the ground.
Moriarty was behind his desk in a swivel chair, reading over a set of files on a slender laptop. He looked up when they entered and twirled a few loops in his seat.
“Welcome, welcome. Mi casa es su casa! You like it?”
“It’s very… evil genius-y,” John said, for lack of a better adjective.
Still, it seemed to do the trick. Moriarty beamed and hopped out of his seat. With only a few side tangents, he pulled John down one of the side hallways. He opened a door with a flourish, and suddenly John was in the middle of a miniature hospital ward. The floor was gleaming tile, peppered with drains to allow thorough sanitation. There was a bay of cabinets and storage on one wall, all brushed steel and glass. John opened one of the doors to find that they were already stocked full of medicines in alphabetical order. A closet beside the cabinets stored medical equipment and machinery. There was a small operating room separated by a little scrub airlock, and on the other wall was a row of white hospital beds, each attached to their own vital monitors and separated by hanging curtains.
John ran his hand over one of the countertops, fingering the edge of a tool tray on which autoclaved instruments had already been arranged. He looked back to Moriarty. “You got all of this for me?”
“Of course,” he said, and for once there wasn’t a trace of guile in his voice. “We take care of our own.” And as far as Moriarty was concerned, there were no further explanation needed.
“I… thank you, Moriarty.” It was strange to be thanking him, when a year ago he would have happily strangled him if he’d gotten a chance.
Moriarty made a tsk-tsk noise with his tongue and waggled a finger at him. “Jim. You work with me now, which means we’re friends.” And it seemed that for Moriarty, it was as simple as that.
“… Right. Jim. Thank you, Jim.” The name felt oddly light on his tongue, a wisp of crisp air that disappeared all too soon. But, he thought, he could get used to all things in time.
Mori- Jim looked pleased. “You’re most certainly welcome!”
Yes, he thought. He could definitely get used to this.
It was strange at first, working for Jim. He had heard Jim reference crimes before in passing, but now suddenly he was deep in the thick of it. There were orders being given to henchmen right next to him, discussions of grisly murders and tortures over tea, and smuggling shipping maps left out on the desks when Jim had to pop out for a quick evidence cleanup. The first few times he overheard something, he had grimaced a little and pretended he was out of earshot. But it was interesting, at the very least, and soon enough he was asking questions, like ‘Why not use an inhaled ether instead of an injected sedative?’ or ‘How is it that you evade computer traces?’ or once, memorably, ‘Where is it you get your dry cleaning done? Some of these bloodstains just won’t come out.’ They were, of course, only stains from surgeries, but Jim had still gotten on an expression as if John had just given him an early birthday present.
Sherlock had always cast him derogatory looks whenever he asked questions like that. He was always a level above John, always had to step off of his pedestal to waste his time to help John catch up. But Jim always explained things; he actually seemed excited at the opportunity to inculcate John with his vast criminal experience.
And so John learned.
Continued in Pt. 2 HERE!