Fics like The Currency of a Life

Culverton Smith has grown impatient, and it is clear by now that John will not be rescuing him. He’s not coming, no one is coming, Sherlock is alone. He is alone in this falsely cheery room with its atrocious wallpaper done up in big blue circles and violet paint, he is alone with a madman who is slowly suffocating the life out of him. Sherlock had told him what he wanted to hear — “I don’t want to die” — but he had trouble being convincing. John hadn’t come, he’d left him for good, so Sherlock had lied to Smith, and said he had not wanted to die, but he doesn’t even think he’s convinced his own killer. It’s what Culverton wants to hear, so they both pretend it is true. “Look at me,” Culverton commands. “I like to watch.” Even in his death throes, Sherlock obeys. Why not? It was strangely intimate, being murdered. The killer and the victim became inexorably bound in that moment of death, like lovers, closer than two people might ever be in that last moment on earth. Why not share it with him? He stares up into Culverton Smith’s hungry gaze and sees the reflection of himself in the other man’s eyes. John didn’t come. His last vision will be of a serial killer, but his last thoughts are of John.

Fics like The Currency of a Life

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