Working on the Edges

Chapter Sixteen

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So this is it, you guys! The end!

I don't really understand exactly how this fic happened, as I wasn't writing a skating AU right up until the moment when I found myself writing a skating AU, and then it turned out to be a 50,000-word skating AU, and my life, you guys. This is, I guess, why you should never lose hope in my writing something, because I feel like life had been wheedling me for, like, a year about a skating AU, and I kept being like, "No, no, no," and then this all happened, so just ignore me, I know not what words might come out of my fingers next.

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John sat with Sherlock's parents at the exhibition. They teased him gently about not wearing his gold medal, and he said that he'd slept with it under his pillow (which wasn't true, he'd slept with it on, but he liked the pillow story better). They laughed and looked at him fondly, and John was already having a second consecutive best day of his life, and that was before Sherlock skated out onto the ice in jeans and a white T-shirt. Really, it should have been illegal for skaters to skate in that. He looked so impossibly good enough to eat that John's mouth watered and went dry simultaneously.

And then Sherlock started skating. To David Bowie. "Golden Years."

"Oh my God," breathed John.

"I didn't know Sherlock liked Bowie," said someone behind John.

John turned. Mycroft. Who he hadn't seen in a few days, he realized. "You know Bowie?" John was surprised; he couldn't help it.

Mycroft gave him a disdainful look.

The routine was a tour de force. Sherlock flew over the ice, his footwork fancy and fleet, his jumps dynamic, his spins quick and fierce. The crowd went wild with it, and Sherlock even bowed extravagantly at the end, as if some of David Bowie's showmanship had rubbed off on him.

"Unbelievable," John breathed when it was done, and then pushed his way out of the crowd, texting Sherlock as he went.

That was incredible.

You're a complete rock star.

You should rethink retiring.

Sherlock finally replied. I'll skate it for you whenever you like. –SH

John grinned and texted back. Is this the equivalent of a sext for you?

He was so caught up in the texts that he ran straight into Moriarty coming out of the rink.

Not that Moriarty had made any attempt to avoid him in any way.

"If it isn't John Watson," he remarked, his lips tipping up into a smile. Not exactly a nice smile.

"Oh," said John, and smiled back, not exactly a nice smile. "If it isn't the silver-medal winner."

Moriarty's icy expression didn't flicker, stayed still and steady on John's. "You think it'll last? You think he won't grow bored with you the way he's grown bored with everything eventually?"

John knew the voice that those little nibbling doubts would take in his brain for the rest of his life would be Moriarty's voice. And he also knew that, just like now, he wasn't going to let Moriarty have that power over him. He wasn't going to listen.

"You were wrong about Sherlock. You've been wrong about him all along. What makes you think I would ever believe you'd start to be right about him now?"

Moriarty lifted his eyebrows, looking faintly amused. "Oh, really? Is that what you think?"

"I know it. You thought his heart would be his downfall, you thought you'd exploit it as a weakness. In the end, his heart was the difference between the two of you, it's what made him the best. It's the reason you will never come close to him. Ever. Hope we run into each other at the closing ceremony tomorrow," said John with a tight smile, and moved away from Moriarty, and toward the rest of his life.