Wednesday 25/08/2010, 07:15 p.m.
His first theory hadn't even been in the ballpark. In the hours since Magnussen left, Sherlock had chased after every possibility in the teeming womb of the unconscious and unpacked his turbulent thoughts. Having weeded out the impossible, he managed to fit a theory to the facts, settling on the only conclusion of the case that seemed logical in conjunction with other factors. It wasn't perfect but it had to do. For now. Moriarty had his fingers in so many pies that it was beyond possible to keep track of every single one of his movements.
It wasn't until late into the evening that Moriarty arrived. The recumbent light of eventide spilt into the homey living room of 221B Baker Street, a million scarlet blooms bleeding into the wooden floor and igniting it ablaze. The sunset in the window was like a blush of majestic hearth that Sherlock marvelled at, admiring the way it danced on the edge of the rooftops that were like a turning page catching the tangerine fire. It was beautiful.
The front door downstairs creaked open. Sherlock's pulse went from 60 to 80 bpm in an instant. He ended up at the intersection of excitement and nervousness when his ears picked up the slow-moving yet rhythmic footfalls coming up the protesting wood-stairs. He was here. The vicious devil. The bloodthirsty monster. The bug-eyed spider. He was physically here with him in this flat. Not his voice, not his ghost, not his messages. Him.
The consulting criminal appeared in the doorframe quietly like a cat. Sherlock felt his cold presence on his skin like a black hole of warmth, pulling his soul into the strong suction. An icy chill washed over him as though he'd walked into a cold shower. So many things had changed since their first meeting three days ago - had it really been just three days, why did it feel longer? After encountering Magnussen today, he was almost happy to reunite with his archenemy.
"It's polite to knock," Sherlock greeted neutrally, not betraying any of his feelings. His eyes slid shut and then reopened, a faint breeze of air escaping through the gap between his dry lips. He quickly wetted them with his tongue.
"If you don't want me in your apartment, lock your door better," a sinfully familiar, melodious voice sang in a silky-smooth Irish brogue. The same voice that whispered to Sherlock almost every day and night.
"As if that would stop you," Sherlock muttered and turned anxiously around to crown the bitterness of his words, implying that the criminal had been the one to fix the lock in the first place. But he had done a surprisingly good job, Sherlock would give him that.
James Moriarty was leaning against the doorframe in a relaxed way, hands in his pockets, chewing a piece of gum on the right side of his mouth. He was dressed in a squeaky-clean, light-grey Westwood suit with a smart white button-up shirt under it and a pair of black dress shoes, looking elegant and handsome as always.
"Is that a cigarette case in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me?" Moriarty flirted, reusing his pick-up lines. Back at the swimming hall, those suggestive words hadn't meant much to Sherlock but now the entendre wasn't lost on him. Moriarty seemed to have sensed this because the man blatantly grazed up and down the length of Sherlock's well-formed body and undressed him with darkened eyes, appraising his outfit of choice - black trousers and a deep-purple shirt - and committing each curve they revealed to memory, having clearly stepped up his game.
Breathing a bit more heavily than a while ago, Sherlock instinctively folded his arms to cover his chest, earning an amused glance from Moriarty that said: I've already seen everything. "Maybe both."
Not waiting for any invitation, Moriarty entered the informal-looking living room displacing all the air inside and walked up to the mantle that seemed to be worthy of study to him. He ran his fingertips over the rigid skull and scrutinised the knife pinning the mail down before relocating to Sherlock's grey colour-fast armchair closest to the window. Impudent. But then again, he had already admitted coming around during Sherlock's absence so it was no surprise that he also showed it in his mannerisms. The black-haired man sat down, taking a figure four-leg sitting position with one ankle over another knee and keenly eyeing a plain chessboard that had been placed on the folding tea table in front of him. The sepia tones came from behind, eclipsed by his pale-skinned face. Shadows washed against his clean hair, feeding on the silent sprays of light it reflected. "I see you were expecting me."
"Yes," Sherlock affirmed and closed the door so their voices could not be heard downstairs. The last thing he needed was Mrs Hudson to walk in on them. After about eight months of shacking up, that old woman still maintained her false belief of Sherlock and John being a couple. Who knew what permanent conclusions she would draw from Sherlock and Moriarty's relationship if the man added a few flirtatious lines and lasvicious glances to top off his infuriating 'playing gay' act?
The consulting detective slunk into his seat on John's armchair opposite to the consulting criminal. "Your start."
The first minutes passed with cultivating silence, pressuring, polluting, unnerving. It was the type of silence during which both of them tried to atomise each other whilst pretending to be occupied with the game. It was only the two of them without the impairment of a lesser mind, just like three days ago. It was hard for Sherlock to fully get a good view of Moriarty's expression since he was angled away from the light, though he was hard to deduce as always, all because of that fake human veil the psychopath used to don each time they met.
After a few moves on the chessboard that sang in glorious blacks and whites, Moriarty opened his mouth. "I want to know what happened in that dream," he blurted out, coming up with the worst ice-breaker ever.
A turmoil of thoughts began tormenting Sherlock's mind but he did not let them spill out into the suddenly tense atmosphere. "...Which one?" he asked cautiously after a while and played dumb. He did not like the direction their conversation was heading. Not at all.
To the detriment of whatever hope he had, Moriarty did not beat around the bush. "The one with knives in it."
"H-how-" Their gazes collided, and Sherlock realised his mistake of confirming it by breaking his words into a stutter. He wasn't used to being in such a situation with someone other than his big brother who listed off facts like a walking encyclopedia - most of the time, he was the one reading others, not the other way around. He did not like to be analysed like this, and he definitely hadn't expected Moriarty to deduce him with this much ease.
"So I was right?" Moriarty chuckled in that knowing way of his. "Oh, Sherlock, you're almost as messed up as I am."
"You just guessed," Sherlock downplayed, sensing a more resonant and profound truth in Moriarty's words than in his own schemas encumbered by his prudishness.
"I never guess," Moriarty countered, sounding truly offended and annoyed like a child who was about to throw a tantrum. He pointedly eyed the plaster on Sherlock's finger, bristling in his seat like an arrogant peacock. "You cut your finger with that knife on the mantelpiece today. It's in a different position from which I left it yesterday, and the water stains on the wooden handle show it was cleaned with soap and aggressive scrubbing. You wouldn't go through such a proper clean-up without a good reason; you were filled with disgust and wanted to get rid of the blood on it. Considering the nature of your work, you shouldn't be bothered by the sight of blood unless it reminds you of something. From your earlier reserved manner and the way you reacted when John pointed a kitchen knife at you yesterday, I could infer the possibility of a dream."
Not bad. Moriarty had given him a master class in logical thinking for which Sherlock would hardly have given him credit. Although he was positively surprised by the mastermind's ability to adopt his way of thinking so easily, Sherlock didn't bother to reply, steepling his slender fingers in front of his mouth to a tower of digits and staring intently at the other.
"Was I cutting you or what?" Moriarty asked nonchalantly, briefly pointing at Sherlock to highlight his words. His jaws were grinding the gum like the machine he was. "Engraving my initials on your ass cheeks? Fucking you with a knife?"
"Stop it." Falling from the precipice of his lost dignity, Sherlock closed his eyes for a second and carved out some time for thinking in order to get his mind out of the gutter. Time crawled to a slow-down, the whole world around him started pulsing in hot waves of electricity, but this time, Sherlock didn't allow for that unknown heat to creep up on him again, that compulsion to pump all kinds of dirt into his machinery. There was no end to Moriarty's teasing unless he decided to quit playing. He had to quit playing, or things would not end well for him. Tit for tat, Moriarty. Even a mild form of resistance wouldn't end well, it never did. And still, he wouldn't go down without a fight, without giving in to the nauseating thrills of their powerplay that awoke something in him it shouldn't have.
It was clear now that the situation bore sexual connotations. Sherlock had never felt this uncomfortable. He was ridden with... embarrassment? Shame? Is that even a feeling? Anyway, something that had rarely been within his range of emotions. Moriarty had that kind of effect on people. On him. And most importantly, Moriarty knew him. He's just trying to provoke a reaction. Don't show it. Control. Remember control.
Moriarty made him lose control without a doubt. Even so, he should not have provoked him that much with only a few cringy pick-up lines. But the more Sherlock tried to ignore it, the harder it was not to think about it. Even the presence of him was enough to make the raw predator inside him stir in its slumber which it had been for as long as he recalled. It was true that sometimes when his eyes drifted to rest, he became one with the very devil, but they were just dreams. It's not like actually desired Moriarty sexually. It did not matter what his subconsciousness wanted - only his conscious mind mattered because he could put a leash on it. Those erotic dreams were rare but they happened beyond the realm of Sherlock's willpower because, more often than not, the dream Moriarty was a cause of agony and death rather than pleasure.
Moriarty, of course, saw right through him. A devilish, self-satisfied smirk was playing on the Irishman's lips, never reaching his eyes. A battle cry of his gathering evil. "No need to be so ashamed, Sherly."
"Oh no, I'm not, James," Sherlock spat back, knowing the other insisted on being called Jim because James was a ghost of his past.
Execrable memories tumbled through the cracks in time, and consequently, a fleeting shadow passed over Moriarty's face only to be replaced by a gleam of sadistic excitement that shone behind those thin curtains of eyelids. He was clearly reminiscing about the delightful murder of his parents, that phantom of bygone memory fluttering on the outskirts of his mind. "Should've kissed me goodbye the last time we met, don't you think?"
"About that," Sherlock groaned and let his arms drop. He grabbed a pawn and moved it one square straight ahead with a hint of frustration. But then again, Moriarty had truly meant that his parents had had it coming. "Why are you still pretending to be my boyfriend? Not very original."
Because I know it messes you up.
Moriarty popped the gum, his voice acquiring a wicked tone. "Pretend?" he frowned, catching the drift of Sherlock's veiled insult that his parricide had been disappointingly uncreative. "Why do you think I'm pretending?"
"...Because you're not my boyfriend." Does he mean that I'm pretending to be something I'm not?
"Yet," Moriarty commented. That damned smirk that played across his - perfect - lips again distracted Sherlock from the issue at hand. There was now a seductive edge within his voice that had dropped to a velvet purr. "This is basically a date."
He had to resist the urge to drag his hand down his face at their conversation that had degenerated to a level of brain-rotting stupidity. "No, it's not. Stop with that... that flirting. It annoys me."
"It turns you on," Moriarty pointed out as though they had been in cahoots on that fact all the time, feasting his eyes on his body again shamelessly.
Not replying, Sherlock threw one leg over the other instinctively and released a sigh of resignation, trying to stop fidgeting on his seat as though there were ants in his pants. It seemed that he hadn't been as attentive to his own movements as he ought to have been. "I think it's high time you told me what the whole thing with Molly was about."
"Don't tell me you still haven't figured that hint out? Eh, I thought it was easy. Like very, very easy," Moriarty stated mockingly with a collection of confused expressions colouring his face, his gaze marked by a frown first wandering to the side and then back to Sherlock. "Oh, but that's right! Molly." Sherlock was expressionless. With nothing but a brief catalogue of references and speculations to go off of, he had racked his brain to work the numeral code out. But to no avail. Thanks to Molly's grumpiness, Moriarty had made sure that he wouldn't have time nor resources to solve it which meant he was going to execute something today. It was simply a bit of showmanship on his part. Sherlock was not cut out to be a lover; he was under a cloud for breaking Molly's heart so many times, and Moriarty had rammed his point home in the most painful way possible. "Although, I was positively surprised to see that you found the connection so fast. That's why I had to slow things down a bit for you."
Deliberately not breaking their eye contact, Moriarty flicked out a pink, serpentine tongue to take the gum from his mouth in an agonisingly lewd manner, slowly squishing it against the corner of the table while analysing Sherlock's reactions. The audacity of this man. Sherlock was overly aware of how Moriarty leered at him and that's what probably messed up his next move, causing his white pawn to be swallowed by his black knight. Moriarty was making his brain malfunction. A distraction, an obstacle, a problem. Sherlock had to change the subject if he wanted to put an end to his flirting. "There's one thing I don't understand," he muttered with a strain in his low voice, frowning at the sticky blob of gum, trying to jettison the disturbing thoughts Moriarty's previous action had planted in his mind.
"Only one?" Moriarty tut-tutted like a scolding teacher.
"Well, two or three..." Sherlock amended bitterly with a slight shrug. He hated to admit it but his growing curiosity got the best of his ego.
"Why don't you tell me what you have deduced?" Moriarty asked, placed a piece onto a different square and leant backwards, lapsing into the placid silence of a listener.
Based on the slivers of information Sherlock had been drip-fed with, his mind rushed to piece together a theoretical scenario of how the events played out. "You wanted me to lure Magnussen into a trap by concocting a story that I was negotiating on behalf of Mike Brown whom he had blackmailed a few months earlier. By indirectly informing me about your trip to the USA, you let me in on the fact that Brown was one of your clients whilst he was merely a pawn playing a big role in your schemes. In the last week of this March, Mike Brown fell terribly ill and disappeared from the public gaze, so to speak, but we both know he didn't. He died. The real Mike Brown died under obscure circumstances, in all likelihood, in an accident that threatened to ruin your entire plan of blighting Magnussen's career. So if not Brown, then you met up with Magnussen in the USA instead. He wanted something from you, you declined, and he blackmailed you. That's when the game started," Sherlock spielled. He had pored over this for so many hours. "You hired a Doppelgänger to play Mike Brown. Intricate surgery. More facial hair, sagged features that could be attributed to his 'illness'. Very clever, fooling the world like that. I wonder how many people you had to bribe or threaten to make it happen."
Moriarty flashed the faintest of a thin-lipped smile at his last sentence, which was an answer in itself. "What gave it away?"
"The untidy beard. To hide the surgical scars. It didn't fit Brown's style, not to mention its fakeness that apparently slipped everybody else... If extensive cosmetic surgery is conducted, it may disrupt the beard's normal growth if the hair follicles are affected in the process. You couldn't consider a beard transplant since the subject must wait a minimum of six months for the next procedure."
"Good. Go on," the other prompted softly, happy to see that Sherlock's mind was capable of reaching his level of strategic thinking, the apogee of his creativity.
Sherlock took a deep breath, eager to voice his findings like a child proudly showing his doodles to his parents. He always forgot to breathe when presenting a whole slew of satisfying deductions to others. "You focused on Brown, presented yourself as his benefactor and tried to distract me from the fact that Magnussen also put direct pressure on you. This all signifies the importance of the documents he possesses if they could potentially cause your grip on your empire to loosen... Sooner or later, the sham was brought to Magnussen's notice, inasmuch as Sebastian Moran mentioned a recent video message in which you probably had played your hand, proving how desperate you were. Supposing, there was no need for negotiation because you're going to get what you want and kill Magnussen all the same. Am I right?"
"You tell me," Moriarty smiled cheekily, holding his fire.
Sherlock let rip a sigh but couldn't resist this opportunity to prove his intelligence again. It was equivalent to peeling the layers of an onion, arriving at its eye-watering centre of truth. What was so peculiar about this case was that the majority of his inferences were gathered by insight rather than eyesight and borne out by unratified evidence. So far so good. "All you needed to be sure of was whether or not Magnussen carried the information with him. Everything else was fleshed out. It would be no use if you got your hands on the documents but the information was also stored somewhere else as a backup, hence all this fuss about the negotiation. Magnussen had never met Sebastian before, and without having made any preparations, he could immediately identify him. It was not hard to deduce where he keeps the information: in his 4G wireless glasses with a built-in flash drive."
Moriarty shook his head and clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth in a condescending fashion, exposing a gap in his otherwise well-balanced, finely-honed thinking and flushing his joy. "In his mind."
Oh... Damnit. A hot flame of disappointment ran through Sherlock's unmelting heart as if he had plucked bad chords in the melody of their conversation. "How can you be so sure?" he wondered, the overgrown caterpillars above his eyes scrunching up. He now understood the fallacy and one of the only missing pieces in the puzzle that turned out to be a better gym for his brain than chess.
"Speaking as a criminal mastermind, that's exactly what I would do," his interlocutor drawled out, asserting his own opinion. "Magnussen knows that I know. He knows that if I kill him, I'll never get the documents because the Appledore only exists in his mind."
"What I don't understand is why you would go to such lengths to bother me if you so desperately tried to keep me in the dark," Sherlock noted, befuddlement piercing through his words. He really hadn't been clued up on any of this.
"You're not seeing the big picture, Sherlock. I have nothing to hide from you. Because I have eyes and ears everywhere, I see and hear everything... After following Magnussen for months, I knew I would be on his radar one day, in which case it was critical for me to be one step ahead. Three months after Magnussen's first if remote contact with Brown, we managed to arrange a meeting with him in person. My myrmidons recorded the entire blackmail scenario between Magnussen and 'Brown'. After I told him about it, the man went completely nuts... Now that we also know about his memory palace, his newspaper will lose all its credibility and his reputation will be destroyed. He is nothing but a blackmailer without proof. Two birds with one stone," Moriarty stated, a microscopic smile breaking out across his clean-shaven face.
Sherlock processed the cavalcade of different information stored in his head and the new chunks that sank into the loam of his mind, finally reaching the finish line of logic. Magnussen was an influential man - it meant he need not back up his blackmail with concrete evidence. And now Moriarty had something to prove that he indeed had no physical documents. Something that would neatly cut the legs out from under him and his media empire CAM Global. "What if Magnussen reveals your true identity? You've killed lots of people to hide it."
"Yes, that's always a risk." His slurred, drawling words delivered his disinterest. Sherlock was not the least bit surprised that the boundaries of this man's self-preservation instinct had been rewritten by his lunacy.
Sherlock knocked off one of Moriarty's pawns and presented the nagging question that had been tormenting him for three days, "What could Magnussen have blackmailed you with?"
Moriarty rolled his cat-like eyes, his indifference withering into annoyance. "That was his biggest mistake," he mumbled without properly responding, his tone straddling a line between bored and disdainful.
"You don't care about money or power..."
"You."
Sherlock's breath hitched at that one minotary word hewn from so many connotations and keen-edged possibilities. "Ah, I see," he nodded, finally enlightened. The pages of a chaotic book came together, bolting the gates of uncertainty. "So those 'documents' were somehow related to me... You couldn't bear the thought of someone like Magnussen knowing more about me than you do."
Only a second after Moriarty's voice morphed into a different reedy pitch. "No shit, Sherlock..." he trilled as if he never grew out of his playground behaviour. "At least, I got something... Redbeard. Would you play as a pirate when you were a kid or are you still doing it?" His psychotic smile came back in full display.
Sherlock pressed his lips together, bit down on the center of both, refusing to acknowledge the childish gibe or take it to heart. "But why would you kill him now? You've had the chance."
"After I blackmailed Magnussen, he threatened that he would have you killed if I uploaded the video online. I don't take him as the killer type but desperate people are so changeable. So... a bullet into the head. Logical. Outcome." He shrugged self-effacingly and made a strategic move on the chessboard. His pressure point was boredom - he wouldn't allow someone like Magnussen to murder his best playmate.
"Oh, thanks for protecting me," Sherlock replied with an edge of biting sarcasm. Now he understood without a doubt why Magnussen had harassed him; his goal was to piss Moriarty off while he was watching them supposedly sneakily.
"Don't be silly," the criminal hissed like what he was about to say was natural, an unavoidable fact of life. "I want you to suffer. But I want to be the one to torture you. Slowly and painfully... No one else is allowed to touch you." With that being said, the criminal let his usual charm drop and it was downright scary to glimpse at what he hid under that mask of charisma. The vile gleam of murderous intent was so ominously reigning over Moriarty's dilated pupils that Sherlock knew he wasn't joking. This man's mind was hell-bent on making him suffer even if it would be the last thing he ever did, and he was so civil about it.
A throb of heartbeat trapped in his throat, Sherlock shifted uncomfortably in the armchair with a swish of his clothes, doing his best to ignore the death threat. He was nothing short of a rabbit speared on the gaze of a predator, yet a familiar thought was tattooed on the walls of his mind palace; he was too intrigued by the idea of complete emotionlessness which Moriarty had the privilege of possessing. In a way, he almost admired it. "What did Magnussen want from you?"
"Power."
Power... No one could cross a man as powerful as Jim Moriarty without consequences, it was tantamount to suicide. Succumbing to the galvanising tempts of pride had been Magnussen's mistake. Only a few hours before, the blackmailer had spoken quietly with not much variation in his vocal inflexions, cocksure that the victory would be his. How the tables had turned, indeed. "Why didn't you give him what he wanted in favour of the secret information?"
"He wouldn't have played fairly. If someone starts to threaten me, I will mush them into human paste. Magnussen's game was all about having power over me..."
"He thought his mind palace would make him untouchable. No wonder he was so smug..."
A lone petal of silence came to be at rest upon their shoulders when the chatter quelled. Sherlock realised that he would soon be climbing down the rungs of the game ladder if he didn't focus on the match. A furtive glimpse at the satiny Rolex watch on Moriarty's right wrist informed him about the passing of time and the fact that it was a quarter to eight already. They had cycled through this wrap-up faster than razor blades, and he was ready for the final closure before he could set his mind at ease. But the difficulty lay in how he should approach the topic... "Those Mike Brown's brothels need to be shut down. And the cult." The blunter, the better.
Moriarty's baleful derision reached even higher peaks when he tsked, "Aren't you forgetting something?"
"What?" Sherlock retorted, but then a tide of realisation and acceptance hit him the instant that question left his mouth.
"That's right. Remember that I'm the one who's in control here. You do anything when John Watson is in danger. How sweet. You two should get married..."
Sherlock's bishop captured Moriarty's last knight on 5c. Irritation surged with every expelled breath of his. He shouldn't have let Moriarty get under his skin. "I will shut them down."
In response, Moriarty just went on to shower him with ice-cold dispassion that was so typical of him. "After the game, you're free to do whatever you want. I don't care."
"Why?" Sherlock pressed on despite knowing that his answer would plainly guide him to a new frontier of daze.
"Because I'm a man of my word. The rules apply only during the game." Moriarty's rook finished Sherlock's bishop that was obstructed by a circle of pawns on 4d.
"You're not making any sense."
"C'mon, be serious, making sense is so boring! If I truly wanted to have it my way, I could just ask Seb here to pull a gun on you and make you dance, but there would be no fun in that..."
Although inconsequential, it didn't go unnoticed by Sherlock how affectionately Moriarty talked about Sebastian Moran, which was unusual given his detestation of the ordinary. It was more than just a boss-employee dynamic there. Backing up that hard wall of muscle was his perfect aim, faultless paperwork and seamless beck-and-call in all areas of life, in spite of his half-dead wits. I wonder what Moriarty sees in him. Despite himself, Sherlock felt something bitter spider through the seams of his heart. Loath though he was to admit it, that sentiment guided his pale lips to part on the brink of a question. A few seconds of thinking. Then, "Enlighten me, Moriarty: is there a specific reason why you chose to protect The Black Circle?"
"You know the answer." By protecting the string of brothels, he'd also protected the cult which seemed to be the centre of everything.
"Fanatic followers?"
A shake of his head.
"Your Catholic upbringing?"
"More like..."
Sherlock was finally bestowed with the illuminative realisation that the whole blood cult had originally been Moriarty's idea which he then implanted in Mike Brown's mind. It was technically his creation, his warped self-image, a stretch of his ubiquitous shadow, one of his many innovative and most important forms of criminality. "...you built an entire perversion of a religion just around yourself."
"Isn't that awesome? There's nothing I wouldn't be able to do!" Moriarty exclaimed lustily. Sanity had a habit of not sticking to him; his dramatic antics just spoke volumes about the pillars of egoistic madness which the entire foundation of his mental instability was built upon. "However, the real question goes more along the lines of: why did I lead you deliberately to the blood cult? Well, I wanted you to understand what you truly are."
"What's that even supposed to mean?!" He had the criminal pegged as a madman, but even by his standards, that remark was too overreaching.
Pleased to no end by his stoic opponent's momentary lapse of self-command, Moriarty replied with an oddly calm sense of superiority, "Show me your right arm, Sherlock, and I will answer your question."
With a huff of annoyance, Sherlock pulled up his right sleeve and put the reddish scars on the soft white skin of his forearm on display. His expression was calloused into coldness again, but he was able to hear his own steady rhythm from within as his treacherous heart tried to force its way out of his rib-cage. Light was the prettiest of nature's graffiti, spraying his scarred skin with a golden rainbow.
A possessive upward curl crept across the criminal's mouth and dissolved into something more sinister. Something in his heavy-lidded gaze had changed, and Sherlock did not like that. "I gave you two hints. One is right there." Moriarty gave a brief nod in the direction of the pinkish scars, the lines that formed an unsightly 'x' blooming on the flat fields of his arm.
Almost afraid that the other could read him so well, Sherlock ventured a cautious look at him and left unexpressed those thoughts slapping the clammy flab of his frenetic mind. The criminal knew that he knew. The scars were Moriarty's mark. The Devil's mark, now etched into the Angel's skin like a stamp of ownership. "What about the other hint?"
"The paper Seb left to you after finishing that stupid bitch." The 'love letter'. A messenger of his authority.
"It only contained my name written in bloody letters... Blood cult," Sherlock mused, lifting his eyebrows an inch out of thin-veiled veneration. "Quite elegant, I must say."
"I know, right?" Moriarty smirked guilefully. "But you actually missed the whole point."
Sherlock frowned. "What point?"
"There's no fun in telling," Moriarty said, leaning forward and locking eyeballs with Sherlock, "when I can show you." His pupils took up more space than should've been possible. It looked entirely too creepy.
"Show me what?" Sherlock demanded in a low voice and unwittingly edged closer to the other man with a mixture of anticipation and curiosity bubbling within his chest, almost challenging his opponent to make a move. Moriarty had no weapons on him, that much was clear. If he needed to engage in hand-to-hand combat, it would be with bare hands. And then there was the knife on the mantelpiece...
"What those scars are truly for..."
In those frozen seconds, all Sherlock could do in his state of nervousness was stare at Moriarty who got up and stepped around the table to get rid of the distance between them, clearly intending to take the lead on whatever would come next. In deliberately slow movements, he tugged off the knife on his right, making Sherlock's alarm bells cry out in an instant. "What-"
"Shh, shh..." Spidering a hand over his chest, Moriarty gently pushed him deeper into the armchair in an unmistakable act of leniency, not of violence, sending Sherlock's heart into a wild fit of cartwheels. He was too stunned to muster a proper response. What on earth-
Moriarty reached out for Sherlock's injured appendage, his delicate digits then shutting around his wrist, placing the knife in his other hand while the detective simply watched in confusion, his back ramrod straight and stiff. "Cut yourself, Sherlock," he ordered, softly and persuasively.
Wow. "Why?"
"Ah yes, the virgin... I know even you aren't that innocent," Moriarty chuckled, his voice dipped to a murmur, a caress dancing down Sherlock's spine. "Because the idea of you hurting yourself for my sake is so arousing. Last time you barely scratched the surface. Not enough to draw much blood... But I know your masochistic side enjoyed it."
"Shut up," Sherlock huffed, holding on to a thread of defiance, for that was all he could say to his defence in the face of the mother of truth. An almost imperceptible blush engulfed his cheeks. He didn't want to hear it from Moriarty's mouth. No. He didn't want to think about it. Truth was merely the consensus of opinion, nothing more. Nonetheless, it went without saying that Moriarty had watched him enter the blood cult and carve the mark on his skin, now visible like letters embossed on parchment taunting him from their place: Devil's chosen one.
"You think I don't know that you do drugs to bring relief to yourself? Or how you actively seek danger because it turns you on? We both know you had a boner the first time we met." Moriarty guided Sherlock's hand, bringing the knife to the soft inside of his right forearm where veins stood out like whipcord, breaking the top layers of his skin with the pressure of a dropped feather. His hand was warm and steady. The touch sent jolts of opalescent electricity. "Do it for me. You know how much I'd love to see you bleed."
"Mrs Hudson's floor would be stained."
"You don't actually care about that."
There was nothing Sherlock could say to that. However, when he stared at the knife in his hand, plagued by indecision, he felt a sudden, strange impulse to obey and please Moriarty. The metal against his flesh, it all looked so... familiar. So... natural. He should've shoved the blade into his nemesis' sculpted neck but he wanted to hurt himself instead. How fucked up. Moriarty was the first to ever see this side of him... and he was like the other side of the same defaced coin abandoned on a wintry sidewalk.
"That's right. Go on," Moriarty encouraged. The mad lilt was completely out of his words. The Devil only wanted his Angel's blood. "Just a tiny nick. I know you'd like to do it."
In the space of a breath, his emotions took hold, springing forth from behind his reason. Sherlock's veneer of composure cracked when the gentle exhortation undid his impulse control altogether like flipping a switch, violently breaking his last vestige of resistance. He gritted his teeth. His hand was shaking upon the patch of skin below the crook of his elbow, the fresh palette to the ready brush that would soon paint it with the colour of life. He was excited or afraid, Sherlock had never been entirely clear on the line between the two. This was like his dream, except he was doing this to himself, giving in to Moriarty to fulfil his sadistic pleasures. What the hell was happening?
Anticipation spiralled into his chest as he lined the tip of the knife up with the scars and pressed down to feel the kiss of metal, not knowing if it was the Angel or Devil guiding his hand at the moment. The one-centimetre-long, laser-intense scratch from his blade prompted a spurt of blood, a single trickle of warm crimson rolling down the incline of his arm to mark him splitting his own skin. The initial smart of pain helped him come out of his head and into his body by amping up the levels of excitement and just as quickly subsiding to a throb of aching pleasure, and Sherlock moaned.
Moriarty made it brutally obvious that he'd memorised the sound. Breathing heavily, he continued to whisper indulgently, "Yes... Oh, yes."
Fresh blood licked the edge of the blade when Sherlock pulled it out, immediately catapulted into the stars of delirious euphoria rising from a rush of pleasure-chemicals. It was hard to breathe. Another heatwave flooded his groin, making him squirm. He was afraid he might combust, for it felt like someone had set a steady match below his waistline. A sensation he'd never been all that familiar with. The blood droplets ran downwards and fell as if they could barely be bothered to conform to the will of gravity.
"A little bit more, Sherlock." The criminal grabbed the detective's chin to invite him back from his twisted high. His thumb smoothed over those irresistibly parted lips with incongruous delicacy, which evoked a small sigh from Sherlock who couldn't help but look into those black twilight eyes, oddly finding sanctuary in them. In Moriarty's mind, Sherlock looked ravishing when he was all flustered and covered in his own blood. Interlaced with a thick Irish accent, he made a teasingly low purring sound, "You want to make Daddy real proud, don't you?"
That was all Sherlock needed to give rise to a brilliance of red colours once more, this time making a cut twice as long and deep and missing the major artery by half an inch. Due to the exquisite perfection of sensations, a pained whine made its way out of his throat. The thin trickle was now more of a small buoyant river, coming out in the hues of burgundy waves. Those thick, poppy-red drops left the veins they belonged in like sap from a damaged tree. Blood, twinkling in its beautiful redness, took on a darker hue upon plopping on Mrs Hudson's newly washed rug. The knife slipped from his trembling fingers with the slickness of butter, clattering to the floor.
In appraisal, Moriarty began to trail the soft pad of his thumb along the scars. It stung pleasantly. "Such a good boy," the criminal praised with his finger pads drifting over the red substance, smearing it over the white skin, the rapid rises and falls of his chest hinting at his excitement. Nostrils flaring, he smelled the sweet aroma of his life juice. And he loved it.
In his mushroom-cloud ecstasy, Sherlock eased back to observe what the other would do next. Bleeding like this... He was awakened enough to see it now. It was so damn beautiful, just as much as it was dangerous.
Oh, Sherlock, you're almost as messed up as I am.
Moriarty swiped the pink point of his tongue over his lips to make his contentment evident. "Leave the aftercare to me." Sherlock didn't know what he meant but he didn't have to wait for an answer for very long when the ravenette's hungry lips alighted on the fresh cut. A saliva-coated tongue flickering out of his mouth, Moriarty started to drink the wine-dark, copper-tasting liquid like a vampire as if it was the sweetest nectar he'd ever tasted, disinfecting the wound in long, lecherous and thorough licks. Jesus. It was evident that he was getting off on savouring the metallic taste of him, luxuriating in the sounds of shaky breaths that shuddered from his bleeding butterfly. The browns and blues were locked in a fierce battle, the space between them thrummed with static tension, and the pleasant feeling intensified. This somehow felt far more erotic than it ought to have.
After what seemed like twenty seconds of unceasing licking, Moriarty let go of Sherlock's limp arm that flopped like a dead fish against the deck of a boat, taking his unresisting left hand instead to rip the plaster off his forefinger. "We can't leave this one unattended, now can we?" he asked sweetly, and that's when Sherlock realised what he was up to.
"Wait-" he gasped, but Moriarty didn't wait for his consent, puncturing the intoxicating candy-sweet skin with viciously sharp cuspids and biting down hard enough to reopen the partially healed cut. Sherlock twitched and let out a pained hiss, reflexively attempting to jerk his hand away from Moriarty's vice-like grip, but without success. How did it hurt so much?
"Ah, fuck, fuck, fuck," Sherlock cursed in a whimpering wreck when he actually meant yes, yes, yes - Moriarty recorded that uncharacteristically foul parlance in his mind, loving to be the author of that pain. Panting heavily, Sherlock was light-headed from a plethora of heady sensations curling around his heart intensely, enhanced by Moriarty's hot breaths dusting his skin. His vision had clouded out of focus, and his mind was filled with all kinds of dirty indecencies which he balked at and refused to put into full voice. However, there was no denying that he was enjoying every second of Moriarty's not-very-de-rigueur demonstration of intimacy. It was... definitely not boring. He'd never been this turned on in his life. It was almost painful.
Just when Sherlock thought Moriarty wouldn't go any further, the man let his arm drop again and cupped his face all too suddenly to seal their mouths together with a teasing mimicry of a kiss. Unexpected. It drew a muffled gasp from Sherlock who was a complete stranger to such displays of affection, so much so that he didn't even know how to respond other than planting his feet firmly onto the ground that had begun to shake.
A firework of hormones exploded behind Sherlock's widened eyes, the chemicals kicked in, and he pointlessly battled to wreck back the control of his brain so that he could find it in him to break free from the manacles of this mindlessness. Control! Pull it back together, Sherlock! he told himself, but in the heat of the moment, he found himself completely stationary, willing and receptive, surrendering to the mystery of Moriarty's initiative.
Sherlock's hands jolted up to grip the criminal's forearms or shoulders, but he immediately felt Moriarty slapping them away and pinning his wrists down against the armrests. "Don't you dare. This suit is very expensive. You keep your hands here or else I'll get mad..." Fleetingly remembering the trivial fact that he was still bleeding, Sherlock connected their lips again in a tango of love, hate and lust. This time, the virgin showed more effort and reciprocated ardently, deepening the kiss, becoming rather demanding in the way his lips danced against Moriarty's more experienced ones - but what Sherlock lacked in technique he made up for in passion.
Does all this make you remember?
Make me remember what?
How much you want me.
Their mouths fit together so well as if drawn in mathematical precision, communicating in sync without the need for words. With a curious brush of a tongue, Moriarty persuaded Sherlock to open his mouth so he could slither in, or more like devour him, completely cancelling out Earth's gravity and sending him flying into space. A tang of copper, salt and peppermint chewing gum assaulted the detective's hypersensitive tastebuds, the wet contact robbing him of whatever reason remained. Physically, Sherlock was bathing in the half-light of the living room, but mentally, he was flying through the air on a planet with zero gravity. Emotions. One's animal ancestry.
It was not long after the last whit of sweetness vapourised into a frenzy of aggressiveness when Moriarty's impatient teeth clashed against Sherlock's, the sheer force of it making his head plonk against the backrest. Sherlock felt Moriarty chomping down on the soft tissue of his lower lip, sandwiching it between his sharp canines, and as a consequence, an embarrassing moan was asserted in the air between them. It hurt. But it was the good type of hurt so he didn't mind. Moriarty's purrs hitched into strangled grunts when Sherlock's blunt teeth played and tugged at his bottom lip in response, causing the other to turn even more violent. A thumb was inserted harshly into the notch above Sherlock's Adam's apple - fuck - along with a super-tight grip on his hair to restrict the movements of his head.
When Moriarty continued to savagely suck his temptingly sensitive flesh, Sherlock no longer knew how to keep up due to his inexperience, just clutching the armrests of John's chair compulsively and fighting the urge to put his hands to some use while gagging on the choked sounds of his own pleasure. His body couldn't stop reacting to the constant bombardment of stimuli, providing auditory feedback that only drove the other crazier. Hot blood welled up in his teeth's wake, and as if that wasn't enough, Moriarty went on to lap those tiny drops and swallowed greedily every new noise falling from Sherlock's now smeared lips.
Moriarty chuckled breathlessly between every touch of their lips, clearly amused by the other's unexpected expressiveness. Sherlock realised at some point his legs had wrapped themselves around his archenemy's and he had made an unconscious decision to readjust the position of his hips to invite Moriarty's knee into his groin, the pressure making all his blood rush south - but he was past the point of caring. Their breaths were a laboured cycle of inhales and exhales, content sighs interlaced with ragged gasps.
Ignoring the previous commands, Sherlock glided his trembling hands over the valley of the shorter man's chest with the intention of removing that obstacle of a shirt, using its lapels to pull him closer, yearning for more proximity, knowing that he had never felt anything physical like this before, running a marathon without actually running. He needed this. It felt so wrong and it felt so right to-
Thudum. Thudum. The pulse on Moriarty's chest responded to the fast hammering of his heart with a series of monotonous, lifeless echos. Sherlock's misty eyes fluttered open and he was sucked into the black vortex of two dead pupils staring back at him like the gaze of a ravenous predator. He went through a colourful palette of emotions, but Moriarty was as empty as a blank canvas. And that's when the fire on his lips turned into ice.
"Checkmate," Moriarty declared triumphantly, pulling away from the rough kiss that had been the first for Sherlock. The flaring blaze of euphoria was extinguished in the ice-cold cavity of a heart that Moriarty possessed, and the blessed moment thawed into a memory, fleeing out of existence. Moriarty was licking his red-smeared lips so lasciviously that Sherlock looked away, smugness bleeding from the criminal's every feature as his gaze slowly turned to the direction of the game behind.
When the worst spinning of Sherlock's internal inferno had subsided, the horrendous reality set in. The dizzy detective disentangled his legs and lowered his gaze to the chessboard in front of him. He had lost indeed. Lost. He had never lost to anyone but Mycroft. Moriarty had unarmed him and pre-emptied each and every one of his calculated movements. He had lost. He never lost.
"You think I don't know what makes you tick, Sherlock?" Moriarty asked, tipping his head to the side with a minor movement. "I told you I'd burn you, but you didn't listen." The dark-toned resonance of his words was in vast contrast with his previous actions. His form was looming over Sherlock, one knee still pressed against the surface of the armchair to keep him balanced.
Sherlock opened his mouth to say something in his defense but the bridge between his mind and words was broken. All the snarky remarks and witty comments fled the clutches of his foggy mind, his lips were throbbing with a dull ache and his tongue felt heavy and numb because it could still taste Moriarty and his own claret liquid, remnants of his moans echoing in his throat. What just happened? he thought and the cogwheels of his brain were functioning at an abnormally slow speed. Did I just kiss... Moriarty? Of all people in the world, did I actually kiss Jim Moriarty?
Sherlock slapped himself mentally with force. Three times. He was under the gun of anger, disappointment and embarrassment, knowing that he had acted on his primal impulses without a second thought. He would never be romantically involved with anyone because he had never been enraptured with the act of kissing or sex; intimacy was nothing but two meats flapping together awkwardly. But still... Why had he allowed this to happen? Why had he lost control?
During their sweet release of passion, the apples of Sherlock's cheeks had gradually taken on a rosy tinge and his curls had morphed into a messy mop of hair, yet Moriarty looked perfectly composed in comparison. He wasn't swayed by one kiss other than being slightly out of breath... and maybe having that smoldering heat in his eyes that could've been fake as well. But Sherlock had felt it for real and he couldn't grasp why it had affected him so much. Why had it felt like ecstasy kissing his nemesis? Why had he loved having his lip ripped open?
He was aroused, he couldn't hide it and he felt like he was going crazy. But thanks to the dreadfully rotten cadavers he pictured in his mind as a turnoff, he succeeded in switching his higher brain back up and resuming control over the jammed-up steering wheel that had temporarily caused him to sheer away from the road of reason.
Human error. I fell for human error. Even he was not above the carnal pleasure principle. He remembered Darcie Evans who had tried to enter her flat next to the street food bar and how sensitively she had reacted to Moriarty's lustful leer and how Sherlock had rolled his eyes at the absurdity of the situation. And now, three days later, he was in the same position, caught like a fly in a web, trying desperately to wiggle free whilst the bug-eyed spider slowly made its way toward him. A predator and prey. A fisherman and a trout.
Sherlock brought his index finger to his parted lips, smearing the tip with sticky red goo, tracing the line of the kiss-swollen, tender skin while stargazing into Moriarty's eyes that were full of little twinklings of conceitedness. Taking the other man's mocking, meaningful look as a hint, Sherlock was sure his lips had bruised and he had no idea what he would say to John. He couldn't just describe how he had engaged in a popular romantic activity with Jim Moriarty involving tongues, teeth, blood and whatnot. That bastard had left the marks on purpose. Everything he did was purposeful. Everything. Like dating Molly four months prior only to leave a hint of the next game, commenting twice on John's blog, paying for his noodles, spraying Yardley London all over his Belstaff coat, killing Darcie Evans, Otto Richter and Paulo Santos, introducing himself to Mrs Hudson, interrupting his meeting with Molly at the café... and now kissing him.
Stupid, stupid, stupid. He would not let this happen again. The temptation had been just too strong to resist. He had allowed a wave of emotions to wash over his judgement and miswire his brain fuelled first and foremost by sense. Sherlock had always detached himself from emotions and he planned to keep it that way. He had basically made out with the most dangerous man in Europe - for two bloody minutes and forty seconds - which was a mistake he couldn't afford to repeat. How could he have lost his mind so completely, so suddenly?
After drinking in the cocktail of his reactions, Moriarty straightened to his full height with a clear intention of leaving. He ran his supple fingers through his immaculate hair to neaten it and tightened his yellow tie.
"I used to think of you as a spider but a vampire bat would suit you better," Sherlock snorted coldly, wanting to have the final word. He had steeled himself again, ignored the ache in his heart. He did not care about Moriarty, and Moriarty did not care about him... or anyone. He manipulated, tortured and killed people.
"Oh, I just wanted your blood in my mouth," Moriarty replied quizzically and made an irritating smacking sound. "People get too worked up about a kiss when there are better ways to show intimacy, don't you think?" Sherlock didn't answer, just glanced at his self-inflicted wounds the blood flow of which had ebbed to a trickle. "And I know you love getting hurt, Sherlock," Moriarty purred, bobbing his head side to side. "You know you deserve the pain. You know you deserve me... You and I, a match made in heaven."
"Or in hell."
A joyless smile grazed his lips - a lopsided grin that contained a forbidding thought process. His eyes were like the night. The moon never shone, and the stars were barely seen. "You shouldn't have drunk poison just because you're thirsty, not even in small sips..." Not waiting for a reply, he walked towards the door. Unreadable as always, having mastered the art of performance. Kissing was just a performance for him, a show he enjoyed. Moriarty knew how to use bonding mechanisms to bring people into his region of influence, there was nothing emotional behind it. Why was it so hard to accept?
Suddenly, the embers of Sherlock's hope kindled, finally dissolving the cottony haze in his mind. The intrigue outweighed the disappointment when one thought managed to cut through his mental fog; Moriarty had not closed in for the kill to steal the silvery cigarette case sticking out of his pocket, not even when he was distracted by the kiss. "Wait," Sherlock said and clambered to his feet. Moriarty stopped with his outstretched hand on the doorknob. Only when the other continued did he lower it. "I've got something of yours you might want back."
"Ah yes... The cigarette case," Moriarty sighed, turning his head slowly to the side. "Consider it an act of reciprocity."
"I assume you let me take the case on purpose. To deduce you." It had occurred to him when he first heard that Molly was also in the know, no matter the fact that Moriarty's actions had indicated otherwise. Sherlock had hoped that in the fortunate case of a blunder, then maybe - maybe - he could've beaten Moriarty to the punch. After it became more painfully evident than ever how insanity had gently massaged away the straining of the criminal's past, that hope just peeled away. Instead, something else twisted inside of him, and he latched onto the feeling of hollow defeat.
"Nah... At first, I was actually upset, but then I realised... None of the ordinary people would've deduced it like you did." Amidst the pocket of enlightenment, Sherlock could finally succumb to the offering of the truth, the only saving grace being Moriarty conceding his minor defeat regarding the stolen case. That's why Molly had seen it; he had tested her deductive abilities. It was notable that Moriarty trusted no one with this much power over him because the roots of his trust issues were buried deep in his traumatic childhood. Yet somehow, Sherlock had managed to rise to a special place in his mind. An exception to the rule. "You understand me without words. So why do I need it back? You know me. You are me. The only person who has ever been worth my commitment is you, Sherlock. Ordinary people - so dreadfully boring. All their silly little problems, silly little emotions... But maybe you're more like them than you'd care to admit."
How offensive. "I'm not like them."
"You are. Or do you want me to kiss you again to prove it?"
The fact that he had come clean, told his untold life story and left the case, his symbol of control and power, in Sherlock's possession spoke volumes about his respect towards him as his equal, as the only unboring person who matched his wits, whom he had been searching for all these years. Someone who would simply acknowledge his existence by solving the intricate crimes he committed. Not to mention the fact that the cigarette case was there to remind Moriarty of the god-like control he had over others' lives. Like his parents'... As for why he had never bothered to kill his brother, Sherlock surmised he didn't need to, for Colonel was never in his way, he did not exist to him beyond a coalesced stardust dancing fleetingly through the cosmos. The criminal only put time and effort into killing those who mattered to him. It was both an honour and a curse reserved for rare individuals. A unique gift, a love letter, a bomb hidden in a bouquet...
"What was the code, Moriarty? The one you wrote on Molly's palm," Sherlock asked as if it was nothing more than a simple footnote, lingering curiosity looming heavily over his question. It was no use saving his face anymore after so much back-pedalling.
"Ah, that," Moriarty fake-gasped with a kernel of imperiousness. "19531616592. What a shame you didn't solve it in time."
"Why did you let me deduce you?"
"Every villain needs a tragic backstory so people like you could try to find a reason behind their evil. But not everyone is hurt inside... And there's nothing you could do to hurt me, Sherlock." Moriarty shook his head slowly, expression unflinchingly stoic - there was no ice on his wounds because he had no wounds. There was not a single crack in his impulsive, manipulative armour of cold psychopathy.
"I will find a way to make you tick, Moriarty."
"No, you WON'T!" Moriarty shouted abruptly with his lips curled into a snarl, flying off the handle, his masterfully crafted facade shattering. Sherlock flinched at the startling outburst of rage that came unannounced, though it wasn't his first time witnessing one of those frightening mood swings. Instead of bothering to keep a lid on his simmering fury, he just let it all out. "JUST STOP IT! Stop it! Why can't you just say you lost? Is it that hard to admit that I outsmarted you, ordinary Sherlock?"
Not waiting for any response, Moriarty wheeled around, flung the door open and stormed his way down, the scraping shriek of a steel lock adding a comma to his unceremonious leave.
All the elements of epiphany were finally present. Sherlock hadn't realised that his feet had carried him to his bedroom where he had hung a poster of the periodic table on the left wall. 19-53-16-16-92. Simple but clever. Like everything Moriarty did. The numbers were letters from the periodic table: 19 for Kalium, 53 for Iodine, 16 for Sulphur, and 92 for Uranium. K, I, S, U...
K-I-S-S-U. KISS U.
Only those five letters were enough to send a surge of frustration through Sherlock. He could've predicted this had he had the time to decrypt the message. Even during their short conversation, it hadn't occurred to him. Moriarty knew that he wanted everything to be clever and that's why he couldn't sometimes see the obvious. Because Moriarty knew how much he had got to Sherlock and damaged his ability of deduction.
Moriarty had planned the stupid smooch right from the start. He wouldn't have fallen for Moriarty's deception had he known... Or would he?
After all the flirting and eye contact, Sherlock should've seen it coming. He should've seen that Moriarty would weaponise his attraction against him. But he never thought Moriarty would take the extra step and actually crash his lips onto his, but then again, that man was just a psychopath born without an emotional register, thinking only in binary logic while pursuing his own agenda and utilising intimacy in his schemes. What else had he expected? It's not like the criminal hadn't done it a million times before, judging by the expert way he had seemed to know exactly where to find his sweet spots.
Sherlock was scared to find himself questioning whether or not he would have declined Moriarty's innuendos if he had decided to take things further, maybe even- No. Not that. He wanted to believe he would've objected but remembering how his animal instincts had kicked into gear inside his brain made him falter in his belief in perfect control. That had been Moriarty's goal: to make him falter, to make him question himself, to crush his feelings. Because during that short-lived lapse of sanity - if Sherlock was being completely honest with himself - he would've let Moriarty do anything he pleased with him.
It was lust. Even Sherlock knew it. He had known it for four months but he had denied it. But denying it only made things worse. Up until now, he had been able to control himself well. But when Moriarty touched him, he had lost it. Completely. Under the spell of desire, his judgment was badly impaired, thus he ignored all the warning signs. Biological urge. Such simple chemistry. Strange how a few hormones and chemicals could affect someone so much.
Never before had Sherlock fancied anyone; probably because he was more turned on by Moriarty's mind and genius than his physical appearance. Beauty was a subjective and shallow construct influenced by role models and evolution. Moriarty was different from ordinary minds, therefore he was the first one to ever catch Sherlock's attention. But that didn't change the fact that he lusted after the criminal, he wanted to taste the poison on his lips once more, he wanted to feel the burn and enjoy the pain.
Sherlock didn't even know how he had developed this attraction to Moriarty but there certainly was something. Stupid, destructive emotions. They weren't a functioning compass, the pointer had been just malfunctioning, making him do stupid things. When the blindfold of lust had fallen on his consciousness, he became a slave to it, blind to its cost. He needed to remove it. Sherlock didn't know what got into him a few minutes ago but it certainly wasn't going to happen again.
But Sherlock knew he would never be able to forget those icy, coal eyes that broke the kiss, burned a hole into the depths of his soul and promised nothing but destruction. That glare was just an expansion of cold emptiness that rested in the burrow where Moriarty's heart was supposed to be.