Author's Note: Well. It has certainly been too long! Sorry for the delay, I took a very brief hiatus but now I'm back.

AND THIS IS IMPORTANT! So read this- if anyone has a prompt for this story specifically, PM me or just leave a review and maybe it'll be the next chapter. I had six already planned out, but then I kind of thought, what the hell, I'll see what your guys' input is and figure it out.

Thanks to all my lovely reader, favoriters, and followers. Extra special thanks to those who leave reviews - they really encourage me to push on and update. Thanks everybody and please enjoy!

Chapter 4: Four Eyes, Two Hearts

Jim Moriarty was not overly fond of the police.

To be entirely honest, Jim found them easily to be the single most boring lot of human beings to have ever dragged their knuckles across the earth. In all that they did, the London police floundered like a man thrown in the ocean with cinderblocks tied to his legs.

They were drowning.

Which would have been all well and good, a deliciously entertaining spectacle to behold, were it not for the single man keeping them afloat. Sherlock Holmes managed to keep the police department's head just above the surface, frustratingly enough.

Yet perhaps now, he was indebted to his detective.

Jim adjusted the collar of his trench coat and pushed his aviators higher up on the bridge of nose. Even in the reflection of a squad car window, Jim Moriarty looked sharp. His hair finely quaffed, his stubble finely overgrown, even his countenance finely soured. A finely refined disguise.

"Detective Inspector Lestrade."

Greg jumped in the reflection behind him, as if shaken from some long-suffering reverie. Jim snorted to himself as he turned around.

"You must be Detective Richardson," Lestrade gruffly stuck out his right hand. "Heard they'd be sending someone."

Jim nodded but ignored the proffered handshake, instead produced a cigarette from one of his many coat pockets and pretended to grope around for a light. Lestrade made him fumble for only a moment more before handing over his plain metal lighter without a word.

"Thanks," Moriarty murmured around the fag. He took a long drag, noticing the way the DI's eyes followed the movement hungrily – former nicotine addict, clean for about eight months, likely using the patch system. Too easy. "You got the bodies 'round? I'd like a look at 'em before your golden-boy tampers with evidence."

"Sherlock," Greg stressed, tearing his gaze away from the Jim's occupied mouth, "is already on the scene. The man's a certifiable genius – I trust his judgment."

Jim nodded again, pinching his face to look even more soured to hide his secret excitement, as he replied rather brusquely with his faked Glasgow lilt, "And I trust he won't be a problem."

Obviously done with their back and forth, Lestrade led Jim past the gaggle of squad cars, through an alleyway between warehouses and down closer to the waterfront. Lying prone on the pebbled shore in the faint morning light, two bodies were strewn – a man and a woman, it appeared.

And standing, perfectly straight with hands buried in his pockets, Sherlock Holmes looked on the scene with indifference, with his live-in pet only a few feet away.

"Morning, gentlemen," Lestrade called out as he strode over, "We've got ourselves a new man on point with us today. Detective Richardson from one of our northern divisions. Supposedly, these two match a description on a couple of missing persons from their department."

The DI stopped just at the edge of the scene, marked out by little red flags stuck in the gravely beach, and murmured quietly, as if for Jim not to hear, "Mind your manners and play nice."

Sherlock barely glanced over, all of a cursory peripheral movement, before the beginnings of a smile showed on his face, "Of course, Lestrade. You needn't worry, Detective – Richardson, you said? – and I have worked closely together before."

Greg had the decency to at least look confused, like he might just ask what in god's name that even meant because Sherlock certainly did not sound like he knew this Richardson character. But, ever slow witted and mundane, Greg Lestrade nodded numbly before walking stiff-legged towards the other side of Dr. Watson.

Jim fancied the idea of someday cracking open his skull to see if there was even a shred of intelligence lurking about. He sincerely doubted it.

"There's no trauma marks, no puncture wounds," John Watson frowned, kneeling beside the deceased woman. "The lack of water in the lungs rules out drowning. There isn't any sign of poisoning or any sort of health complications."

It was painfully obvious.

But then that was why, Jim assumed, Sherlock kept the doctor around. It was so very entertaining to see the normal little man struggle to put all the pieces together, nauseatingly adorable, really.

John Watson could serve only to bask in the fire that was Sherlock Holmes' brilliance – but Jim Moriarty? He was the only man that could stoke that fire in a roaring blaze, igniting the full genius which laid untapped for such a tragically long stretch.

"So then what are we dealing with?" Lestrade asked impatiently. John stood up, brushing off his trousers, and turned an expectant gaze upon his flat mate.

In turn, Sherlock rolled his eyes as he set to work.

Jim liked to imagine the detective making a broad flourishing gesture, like some ring master – a sociopathic ringmaster, none the less. Prepare to be amazed.

"Clothes fully preserved, no tears or signs of struggle. They were treated with dignity upon death – executed, cleanly and with mercy. The man's coat, heavy in this time of year but necessary for the weather from where so ever he originates," the detective paused thoughtfully, stooping down over the man.

"And where might that be?" Jim drawled nonchalantly and took a deep, purposeful inhale on his cigarette. At this, Sherlock turned his full attention upon the disguised criminal with a sort of simpering glare.

"Scotland."

"You're sure?" John cut in.

"Back of left hand, they both have a matching stamp," Sherlock delicately lifted the man's arm up by his sleeve, indeed showing a faint sallow stain on the backside of his hand. "Blackbriar, it's a Scottish nightclub in Glasgow. Both were there likely the night before, based the decay of our bodies. They were executed and brought here, sans identification, and dumped far away in the hopes no one would know where they'd come from originally."

Moriarty could hardly contain the smile threatening to split his face. Watching Sherlock Holmes work in person was a vast improvement over simply sitting at the sidelines away from the explicit reality. Nothing was greater than seeing the wheels turning behind those ever-arrogant blue eyes.

"And," the consulting detective continued, "if either of you two paid any mind to the news outside of England, you might know this man and woman were wanted for murder and larceny."

Jim couldn't stop himself from taking a few steps closer as he murmured, "A killer who kills killers. What might one deduce from that?"

Sherlock's gaze snapped up to find Moriarty's.

"The same thing we might from a man who carries a knife in lieu of a gun," he whispered back. "Just as quick, just as efficient, yet guaranteed to be much more painful, much more intimate."

Moriarty felt his hand twitch toward his fake gun holster, indeed carrying a serrated blade rather than some dull gun. Frankly, firearms were hardly any fun, no mystique, no thrill. But a sharp edge? Much sexier.

And Sherlock always had such keen observation skills. Also, much sexier.

"So he fancies himself an angel?" Jim leaned in closer, letting his aviators slide coquettishly down the bridge of his nose. If his grin was remotely crooked, the only one who noticed was Sherlock.

The detective blinked and then smirked minutely, "Never – rather, a fallen angel if he were ever to admit to being so righteous."

"Still doesn't explain how they died," Lestrade crossed his arms.

The proverbial spell broke – Sherlock moved around to the female victim, back on track once more. He gave an exasperated sigh, loud and petulant.

"But it does, Detective Inspector, you just can't see it properly."

Watson nearly groaned, "Just tell us, for god's sake. We all do have lives to carry on with."

Sherlock clapped his hands together for effect, and faced his captive audience, those twin blue depths alight with such dazzling brilliance. The headache of orchestrating a day off was entirely worth it, Jim believed.

"They were poisoned with a common plant found all over the UK," Sherlock quirked a single brow, "Foxglove, also known as digitalis, is extremely dangerous when given a highly concentrated dosage. In the southern regions of Scotland, it is referred to as the 'bloody fingers', a wonderful fit for our victims. Indeed, the two have blood on their hands and our killer executed the two for it."

Lestrade looked unremarkably unconvinced while John teetered on the edge of awe and disbelief.

"And how do you know it was foxglove?" the DI frowned, making the rest of his face furrow in strenuous resolve.

Sherlock opened his mouth, but Jim beat him to the punch.

"Digitalis is nearly untraceable, an immense boon for would-be killers and suicides." Moriarty dared a peek over at the detective, who was watching him with a burning intensity that set a flame down in the pit of Jim's stomach. "However, to synthesize a dosage of that potency would require some remedial knowledge of plants."

Nonchalantly, Jim opened his trench coat and pulled from the interior compartment a plain manila folder. He held it delicately in his leather-gloved grasp, offering it to whomever might be quick enough, or brave enough, to take it.

Lestrade grabbed the file first, flipping it open to scan the contents, and read aloud, "James Lebowitz, age thirty-seven – occupation: plant nursery manager."

The silence that followed was deafening.

For the first time, it seemed, John Watson focused on the man before him, closely inspecting Moriarty from head to toe until finally settling upon his face.

"Where did you say you were from again?" the doctor's mouth pulled into a grim line.

"He didn't," Sherlock took a long stride closer and muttered softly, "Leave now and I won't give chase."

Moriarty chuckled darkly in return, dropping his northern lilt.

"Hardly an incentive."

Their silent battle of glares lasted only a heartbeat longer.

Jim shrugged, starting to turn away with a rueful smile, "Ah, but I have other business to attend to. Don't be a stranger, Sherlock – that would just kill me."

In the edges of his peripherals, the consulting detective minutely relaxed, some of tension leaving his lean frame.

"I almost forgot!" Moriarty announced loudly, spinning on his heel. Perfectly predictable, Sherlock's entire body seized up, coiling inward on itself as if to strike. How lovely to know he could still have such a violent effect on the man – seems the magic wasn't lost, no matter how much the detective might pretend otherwise.

Jim moved back into Sherlock's personal space, using one delicate finger to open the right side of Sherlock's infamous black coat. With surgical precision, and never once breaking eye contact, James Moriarty placed a single cigarette in Sherlock's breast pocket, directly over his heart.

"This should tide you over until next time."

The detective said nothing and the criminal had nothing to left to say.

As the criminal mastermind Jim Moriarty walked back the way he came over the pebbled shore, he forced himself to not turn around. Not to look back to savor the look on his detective's alabaster face. Not to see if his hand lingered at all over his heart or the present residing atop it.

Temptation, surely, is a cruel mistress.