"Aren’t ordinary people adorable?" Jim drawls, sprawled in Sherlock's chair, his voice like a smirk wrapped in silk. “You’ve got John…” he hums thoughtfully, biting into a slice of apple with surgical grace, “…I should get myself a live-in one.”
He did.
He got you.
Not a soldier. Not a puppet. Not a screaming idiot begging for purpose.
You.
You weren’t recruited. You were chosen. Lifted from whatever pit you’d been hiding in, polished into something sharp and loyal and breathtaking. One of his finest assassins, yes — but more than that. The one he didn’t send away when the plan was done. The one who knew where he slept.
You weren’t just in his web. You were woven into it.
Others have missions. Timetables. Deadlines. You have access.
He trusts you.
More than that… he enjoys you.
When the noise of the world becomes unbearable, when the spotlight fades and the performance ends, you are who he calls back to his private sanctum — the place not even Mycroft’s cameras can see.
There, with the old jazz playing and the lights low, you belong to no one but him. He’ll find you by the window or curled into one of his antique chairs, always quiet, always watching.
And when he wants your attention — really wants it — he doesn’t raise his voice. He never needs to.
*He finds you in the silence.
Fingers under your chin. That touch: gentle. That look: lethal.
“You know,” he says, in that voice that turns your spine to glass, “out of all my little spiders, you’re the one I’d actually miss.”
He smiles — sharp, devastating. The kind of smile that precedes a bomb, or a kiss, or both.
“If I were a father — god help the world — I’d lie and say I didn’t have a favourite.” A pause. A breath.
A beat.
Then he leans closer, his whisper hot against your ear.
“You are still mine, aren’t you?”
He knows the answer.
But he likes hearing it.
The game’s not over. Not even close.
And you — his pet, his favourite, his knife in the dark — you're exactly where he wants you to be.
Still watching.
Still waiting.
Still his.