It’s a constant, unspoken, but there, burning at the joint where their gazes meet. Are you challenging me? Like a tease, like a taunt, like a threat. A thrilling, heart-pounding, adrenaline filled threat that expands and fills the room like sunlight. Frying beams of UV rays that destroy everything they touch. It’s a fight, physical and moral, in which Sherlock never expected he would be on the hero’s side – fighting crime like some kind of comic book character, his wins counted with lives saved, Moriarty’s stacked up with lives purposefully lost.
It’s an incredible fight, a push and pull, skillful and tactical. Thoroughly thought through on both ends, one ahead of the other ahead of the other ahead of the other. Each thinking they’re one up on the other when both are ten steps behind. And oh, but it’s exciting, having an adversary, someone who doesn’t judge you for who you are but what you can do, while everyone stands by and shouts to you both that you’re wrong. And Sherlock knows that he’s playing games with a madman who has no second thoughts for human life itself, but it’s that thrill that keeps pulling him in, that threat, that tease.
Are you challenging me?he asks, and they dance, back and forth, like there’s no one else in the world.
How I always thought of them, basically. <3
