A/N: sorry about the inconsistent updates, guys.

John woke up too early. In the dim light, he could make out the small analog clock next to Sherlock's bed.

Sherlock's bed.

His eyes shifted to the blue-lit form crumpled up in the sheets, only his shoulders bare. Sherlock was snoozing lightly. His skin looked like marble, or robin's egg blue tissue paper. John needed to use the bathroom but he didn't want to move.

Sherlock was sleeping so peacefully; John felt guilty as he lifted his limp arm off of his stomach so he could slide quietly out of bed. The hardwood floor, perfectly constructed, made no sound as he padded out of the room and into the bathroom.

It was incredibly cold. John regretted not putting on any robes but was unwilling to go back into Sherlock's bedroom to gather his clothes off of various parts of the floor and put them on. He resolved to piss, take a quick shower, then run downstairs to grab a piece of toast as quickly as possible.

The bathroom was as artfully crafted as the rest of Sherlock's mansion. Made of what seemed to be marble, it was half the size of Sherlock's bedroom but still significantly larger than John's. There was a large bath in the center of the room with a collection of soaps on a counter next to it. The toilet was in the corner, and just as luxuriously made.

John was amused at how a twenty-two year old came into possession of something as inconsequential as an enormous mansion with fifteen gourmet soaps. Someone like Sherlock, no less. And he was here, about to take a shower with those soaps, and then he was going to slip back into bed with him and sleep the morning off. It was too good to be true. A few hours ago felt a dream he didn't want to let go of. A haze of emotion and euphoria, something John wanted to have and hold for the rest of his life, short as it could be.

Even in the dim light, Sherlock had looked like a demigod. Carved and lean and so satisfied in his pleasure, so smug with the knowledge that John wanted him. He kept replaying moments in his mind. The look in Sherlock's eyes - complex and almost obscure - as John told him how amazing, how unbelievable he was. John was clinging onto the memory of Sherlock's skin, although he didn't need to.

This was all his.

***

The sounds of silence were rising as dawn lit Sherlock's curtains with a cool, deep winter cold blue. John slipped back into bed, coveting the warmth that Sherlock's limp body provided. His hair was damp, getting a little too long to slick it back with any manner of success. Untamed, it shagged over his left eye in a straight mass. When he leaned in to get warm, Sherlock stirred and halfheartedly turned his head to look at John, like he'd forgotten why he was here. John smiled at him encouragingly. Sherlock closed his eyes and blindly tried for John's hand under the covers.

His voice was slurred and groggy, heavy with sleep. "Where were you?"

"Taking a shower." Under the covers, John's hand looped over Sherlock's hip and slid to the base of his belly. Sherlock entangled their fingers together and John's chest swelled like a plume of fire.

"I was thinking."

John scoffed. "When are you not?"

"Shutup," Sherlock murmured gruffly, in one word. John could feel Sherlock's back expand into his stomach as Sherlock inhaled, deep. The exhale was slow and loud, through Sherlock's nostrils.

"What?" John asked, more uncomfortable than curious. When Sherlock started to hold himself back, it was always a bad sign.

"You should move in with me," he said in a single exhale. The silence that followed his statement was awkward and uncomfortably empty. Sherlock didn't move at all.

John found himself propping himself up on his elbow to try to glimpse Sherlock's expression. His mind was going blank. When Sherlock looked up at him, there wasn't a hint of humor in his eyes. "Move. In," John stated plainly. "With you?"

Sherlock was silent, and his eyes remained cool. He nodded, once.

"How - how is that a good idea?"John asked incredulously.

"We can get the hell out of here, for one," Sherlock murmured.

"And go where?" John laughed, more from shock than genuine laughter.

"To London."

"You want me to move in with you," John parsed through, "so we can move to London. Leave everything behind."

Sherlock's expression morphed into slight confusion. "That is what I said, is it not?"

"Yeah, but..." John swallowed. Everything he had here - he wasn't sure if he could let it go.

But then again, what did he really, truly have here? He didn't have a job anymore. He was on a prolonged break with his fiancée, who for all intents and purposes didn't love him anymore. His best friends were angry at him and one was being shipped out to the front line in less than three months. He never talked to his sister for longer than he absolutely needed to. And if anything at all, there would be more artistic opportunities in London than Bristol. There was really nothing holding him here except his own fear, his own reluctance.

He could cut all ties. If he wanted.

"Move in." Sherlock's voice was shockingly sincere and came out as a plea rather than an order.

"I just need to graduate college and get my field credit," Sherlock stated calmly. "Then we don't have to hide anymore." They would still be hiding, though. Maybe not that they were living together, but that they were a couple. No one could ever know that. And wasn't this fast? And - their jobs - how would they pay for anything in London, where they were being laid siege to day after day, night after night? At least Bristol was relatively safe. "They don't care about two men living together in London," Sherlock pointed out, "not like here. Not like Oxford."

"How would we support ourselves?"

"We could" - Sherlock hesitated, as if he thought what he was about to say was juvenile or foolish. "We could solve crimes for the Scotland Yard."

"What do I know about solving crimes?"

"I don't know, you could be an artist, too, I suppose."

It made sense. John was angry it made sense, because it was this frightening clarity, an easy decision that he should have come to months ago. It was too hard to think about, never mind enact. And his fiancée - and Moriarty-

"I can't do it, Sherlock."

"Why?" Sherlock's voice softened. "Tell me if you - if you don't want to."

"No" - John smiled sadly, brushing back dark curls from Sherlock's crystalline eyes - "no, I want to. Just, Claire-"

"-deserves better."

"-isn't safe if I leave."

Sherlock went silent. His eyes searched John's for a fleeting notion, for a lie, a misstep - not knowing that this was the most truthful John had been with anyone in months. John wondered if Sherlock knew what he was thinking, somehow. His pulse was rising like an executioner's drum roll, and he was half-afraid and half-relieved that Sherlock could feel it if he got too close. Half-afraid Sherlock would discover the extent of John's treachery, but relieved for the same reasons.

Sherlock threw off his covers and slipped out of bed. A twinge of cold-blooded panic ebbed in John's abdomen when Sherlock started to make his way towards the door. "Sherlock?" John called, softly. It was eventually his desk that Sherlock positioned himself behind, opening one of the drawers and removing what looked like a small piece of paper. Sherlock returned to the bed, turning on the bedside lamp and throwing the "paper" down on the blankets.

"That is what they found at the remnants of the scene." Sherlock's voice sounded profoundly detached.

When John looked up to pair the voice with the face, Sherlock Holmes was hiding his features under both hands, wiping the exhaustion away from his cheeks. "What scene, Sherlock?" John asked, wary.

"Where my mother died." John's eyes flickered down to what Sherlock had placed on the bed. "This is the only thing they left there, on her dead body."

It was a playing card, with the lower right corner soaked through with blood. An ace of spades. The sight of something so playful drenched with blood was so twisted in its irony. The juxtaposition was haunting.

It wasn't even the blood that shook John. It was the fact that he recognized the card as the ace of spades that had been inside of the first ever letter he had received from Moriarty. It was exactly the same. From the material to the design, a carbon copy, tinted dark brown.

"I'm sorry," John asked, deeply disturbed, "but what does this have to do with us?"

"James Moriarty," Sherlock stated surreptitiously, like he expected John to gasp in realization. John didn't know what to do next, so he tried to pretend he literally did not understand what Sherlock was trying to say.

"What?"

"I know, John." His voice wasn't smug or self-congratulatory. Rather grave - a tone he only took on while speaking about his time at Oxford, about his past. He was being serious. Jesus. He knew.

John was silent as he strategized the next thing he would say. He could admit it outright. Put his life in Sherlock's hands, put himself at the mercy of Sherlock's morality, despite John's betrayal. John tried to read Sherlock - was he angry? Upset? Indifferent?

He looked like he was holding himself back, which was a rarity for someone as brash as Sherlock. He looked restrained and raw. The best course of action was probably to let Sherlock tell him what he knew instead of incriminating himself needlessly. Cautiously, John asked, "You know what, exactly?"

Sherlock sighed exhaustively, as if this was starting to be a waste of his time. "That you've been spying on me and giving the information to Moriarty," he stated, point-blank.

"Oh." John attempted to parse through the new information, and he wasn't able to. "Oh. So" - John looked away from Sherlock to the shape of his own legs underneath the sheets - "I thought-"

"Thought what? That I couldn't pick up the simplest clues?" His tone was becoming increasingly more intense. John didn't know what he could say to minimize the damage. "And don't even bother to ask me if I'm angry."

So, he knew. The first that occurred to John was he had been incredibly presumptive - perhaps foolish - to believe that Sherlock wouldn't find out eventually. And then all he could think about what this meant for them. "You are, I'm guessing," John said, trying to get ahead of the inevitable argument that was about to happen.

"Of course not." Sherlock's brows crinkled. In that exact moment, a tension that John didn't know he was holding inside of him evaporated. The breath inside of his lungs slowly siphoned out of his nose.

He should have been mad. It was a complex and indecipherable mystery that John couldn't grasp. "Why not?"

"I knew he had you under his thumb. Who you were doing it for." Sherlock paused, and the silence was noticeably loaded with meaning. "I would have shamelessly done the same thing, given your situation. And done it successfully."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"You have potential, but no preparation," Sherlock said. "It took me longer than it should have to catch on - but the fact that you were in a physical altercation that involved my lamp really was a bit of a red flag. And then the puncture wounds in your palm and neck: the only thing it could have been was a syringe, and you don't take intravenous drugs via your palm - I would know - so someone else drugged you by force on the same night you were beaten up. Then it was only a matter of determining who."

"How-"

"I already knew Moriarty was going to try to get to me, somehow. It was easy enough to come to the conclusion that you would be a potential target. In a way, it is my fault. I could have been more careful."

"How did you know that he wanted to get to you?"

"Didn't he tell you?"

"He's being rather opaque about this whole ordeal."

Sherlock nodded, thoughtfully. "Alright. The playing card; it is his signature."

"Why a playing card?"

"Besides the tongue-in-cheek commentary on gambling? Dictatorship, John. Tyranny. The fall of democratic election, the fall of free will, and the rise of fascism." Sherlock took up the card and turned it in his fingers, inspecting it carefully. "In every deck," he murmured, almost to himself, "there are four sets of cards that are uniform and identical in almost every way; a spineless mass that can be trumped with a single high card. Seamless assimilation is a concept not foreign to Nazism.

"Before the war began," Sherlock explained, his voice becoming more charged with unfettered emotion, "only weeks before Adolf Hitler invaded Poland, my mother and brother went to Austria to speak with Kurt von Schuschnigg, the Austrian Chancellor at the time. It was a type of negotiation. They had a document with them. Top secret. No one was supposed to see it except the chancellor himself. My brother called it incentive."

"Incentive to do what?" John asked, intrigued by Sherlock's urgency.

"To stop the war." Sherlock laughed, but it was humorless. "That obviously fell through."

"What was it?"

"A scientific breakthrough that could end life as we know it, given the right militaristic applications."

"Sounds like a bloody sci-fi novel."

"Nuclear war is no longer a thing of science fiction, John."

"Wait." John sat straight up, brought his legs close to his chest. His face crumpled in shock. "Wait, you're not saying..."

"It was only incentive," Sherlock assured John. "My mother-"

"You're not telling me that you were thinking about bombing us all to hell," John said disbelievingly, almost expecting Sherlock to laugh and tell him the real truth. Or, at least a truth that felt vaguely plausible.

"It's an American project. No one has the technology except for them. Roosevelt sent Churchill a remedial outline of a potential bomb, in case England was forced to use it. Because, as you know, the American people have absolutely no desire to enter another war."

"So they were," John tried to clarify.

"They were establishing they had the ability to," Sherlock said. "It is the biggest trump card ever created; the only one that ends in mutually assured destruction. What is now the Third Reich's espionage program attempted to extract this document during the assembly. They broke into the Austrian-American embassy and tripped off the alarms. We thought the Austrians did it, the Austrians thought we did it. Everyone was shooting at everyone, and in the chaos, the spies attempted to steal the plans. My mother tried to get to it; they shot her. In kind, Mycroft shot them."

There was something acutely terrifying about that. He couldn't imagine Mycroft - powerful and smug in his own apathy - using a weapon out of pure revenge. He couldn't imagine Violet Holmes on her back, brown eyes staring lifelessly at the ceiling, a hole in her back. John couldn't see the playing card soaking itself through with warm, syrupy blood. But Sherlock probably could. Probably mapped out the scenario in his head a thousand times and reconstructed every detail. Was Mycroft wearing his black leather gloves when he finally closed his mother's eyes? Or was it his bare skin, pressed against her eyelids? Was he shaking from fear? From anger?

Did Sherlock hate him because he couldn't save her?

"We think Moriarty is the head of a very dangerous organization," Sherlock said. His voice wasn't quiet, anymore; more rapid fire and factual than pensive, and it brought John out of his thoughts. "He's a mercenary, of sorts. He works for whatever government will pay him the most, and if they're paying equally, then whichever job is the most fun. Germany's Chief General, Heinrich Himmler, is directly connected to this man. They know that Austria was a fluke, and they know that the document they failed to extract is even more imperative now than it was before. They don't know what's inside the document, or where it is. Moriarty's objective is to discover these things.

"Now, imagine this - a man starts fucking your target. He's got a family, friends, a fiancée. All Moriarty needs to do is to push him a little closer, and then he has the target, essentially, in his cross hairs." Sherlock pressed his fingertips together and rested them against his chin in a steeple. "You were perfect, John," Sherlock noted. "Like a present, signed and delivered. We're fucking, and I know Mycroft, and Mycroft knows Winston Churchill. If he has you, the Axis Powers have the Prime Minister. If he has you, he has the free world, John. Do you see?"

John knew Sherlock was being rhetorical, but he didn't know what else to say. "I see." If Moriarty had already blackmailed John into giving up vital information, there was no guarantee that John could turn the tables on him. "So what do we do?" John felt like he'd deflated. There was no hope here. Sherlock was just explaining something that was set in stone, and John was being foolishly optimistic to think that there was something to be done to undo the damage he had caused.

"Well, Mycroft suggested I kill you," Sherlock said nonchalantly.

John snapped, "Tell him thank you for the vote of confidence."

"But I decided that we could spin this to our advantage," Sherlock continued. His voice brightened a little.

"Yeah?"

"Simple," he answered with a small, coy smirk. "Moriarty wants information? Give it to him. Just not the right information."