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“I know you,” Moriarty says, and oh, how softly he says it. “I know you,” he says again, this time punctuating it with a slap to Sherlock’s cheek. It’s open-palmed, gentle: he could be a friend rousing another from a drunken slumber; this could be a play-fight between lovers. He leans in close, presses his mouth to Sherlock’s ear. Sherlock can feel him smiling, can hear it in his words. “I know you, and I know you’re awake, and you really ought to open your eyes.” His voice turns light and conversational. “Because if you don’t I’m going to staple them shut.”
Nothing for it, then. Sherlock opens his eyes.
Moriarty’s smile widens. “Good boy.”
Sherlock doesn’t dignify that with a response. Moriarty doesn’t appear fazed. He keeps grinning.
Nothing in the room gives any clue as to where he is, except that it is no longer London. The curtains are closed, and it’s quiet; no rumble of traffic to tell him how far he is from street level, in a basement or on the fifteenth floor. That’s to be expected. If he’s being allowed to see and hear, it’s because Moriarty’s confident that nothing will give him away.
(He hasn’t been gagged, either. That thought—and the conclusion that inevitably follows it, there’s no-one to hear you scream—is not exactly reassuring.)
The room itself, though, is like nothing he might have expected. Moriarty’s such a showman; Sherlock would have thought him the type to go in for spotlit interrogation rooms, or perhaps shadowy dungeons. There ought, at least, to be a lackey or two looming menacingly in the background. Instead, it’s just the two of them, in what has been made up to look like an ordinary suburban bedroom. The handcuffs around his wrists are secured to a wrought-iron headboard. The light fittings are IKEA. A print of seashells on a beach hangs on the far wall.
Ordinary—but not. Everything is so beige, so painfully, inoffensively tasteful. There’s nothing personal here; nothing he can read. It’s got that hotel-room blandness; an attempt at creating the illusion of homeliness, of intimacy, where none exists. There’s a silver photograph frame standing on the bedside cabinet. It’s empty.
He thinks, on balance, he might have preferred the dungeons.
“How do you like your room?” Moriarty leans in close, voice silky and indulgent in his ear. “I thought we might as well be comfortable while we get to know each other.”
“I know you as well as I need to.”
Moriarty makes a little moue of disappointment. “But bare necessities are so boring, aren’t they? Sherlock, didn’t anyone ever tell you about keeping your enemies closer?” Moriarty draws out his name, speaks it like a caress, and it’s only the need to remain focused and alert that keeps Sherlock from snarling at him to shut up. He scans the room for escape routes, possible weapons—if only he can get out of the handcuffs, which is a big ‘if’—until a hand on his torso steals his attention back, a thumb slipping beneath the waistband of his trousers. “And we’re about to get very close indeed.”
Only one thing that can imply. This is a joke. It has to be a joke.
The thumb under his waistband strokes gently, and he snorts derisively because otherwise he’ll shudder. “You can’t be serious.”
Another stroke, and then Moriarty removes his hand. Relief is short-lived; both Moriarty’s hands are on his shirt, then, working at the lowest of the buttons. “Sherlock. I’m very serious.” He lowers his head; presses his mouth to the inch of skin that’s bared when the button pops open. “You.” Another button; another kiss. “Are getting.” Another. “Every. Consideration.” He looks up, smirking: relaxed and teasing, but for the manic intensity of his gaze. This is the sort of thing ordinary people do with their partners, isn’t it? It’s a grotesque parody of flirtation.
Enough, Sherlock decides, is enough. He kicks out, tries to twist and throw Moriarty off him—pointlessly, it turns out. He’s still weak from whatever he’s been drugged with, his limbs feel soggy and useless, and a firm grip on his hips is all it takes to hold him down. Moriarty tuts and gives him a disappointed look. Then he’s up and off the bed, grabbing something out of the chest of drawers beside it, and back again all in one swift movement. He holds the thing he’s grabbed—a syringe, Sherlock sees the glint of the needle from the corner of his eye—millimetres from Sherlock’s neck, close enough that he imagines he can feel the point of it piercing the skin.
“Now, now, now,” he says. “I do so want you to be awake for this. Ragdolls are no fun at all. They get given to my boys. And I’ve been looking forward to being the first one to play with you.” He grins; a threat, bright with bared teeth. “Taking you out of your packaging, all shiny and new…” His voice softens, drips with feigned concern. “I’m afraid my boys wouldn’t be nearly so careful. So. Will you be good for me?”
It isn’t true that Sherlock Holmes never feels. His hatred for this man is a cold sun. He glares.
Moriarty smiles sweetly. “That’s better.” He places the needle back in the drawer, takes out something else, and places it on top of the chest. It’s a tube of KY Jelly. (It’s a statement of intent.) “Now, where were we? Oh, yes. Your packaging.”
He starts back on the buttons. His hands are gentle and ever so steady, his lips brush slyly at bared skin, and all those insidious little touches slip in under the edges of Sherlock’s consciousness more surely than brute force ever could. Violence would be simple. Gentleness, though, requires analysis, demands his attention (things Moriarty could be trying to do: persuade, confuse, distract, discomfit, possess) and he has to concentrate hard to clear his mind—still fuzzy around the edges with drugs—to think about how (if) he’s going to get out of this. (Weakened; restrained; unsure where he is, except in the power of the cleverest adversary he’s ever encountered. He’s under no illusions. His chances don’t look good.)
Moriarty finishes with the buttons and peels his shirt open, presses his face to the hollow of Sherlock’s stomach, inhaling deeply. Sherlock can’t escape the thought—more disquieting than it ought to be; he’s encountered plenty of lunatics in his time and they don’t normally manage to disturb him—that Moriarty would inhale him, would absorb him completely if he could.
It’s a textbook obsession, in many ways. Moriarty’s reasons for attacking him go beyond the practical. If he wanted to avoid detection, all he’d have to do would be to keep his criminal activities suitably profit-driven and dull. Instead, he’s determined to stay on Sherlock’s radar. He holds up the idea of a connection between them, a mirroring, as though they are two halves of one thing. Plenty of stalkers cherish the illusion of a close relationship with their victim where none exists. Moriarty’s cleverer than most of them, certainly, but are his delusions any different in kind?
Sherlock knows the criminal classes. He knows what this is. And knowing it ought to disarm it; ought not to give it power, to leave him questioning himself or wanting to crawl out of his skin in disgust.
(At times, very late in the nights, when alone, he has admitted to himself that he suspects Moriarty may not be entirely deluded. It’s not that he cherishes the idea of a similarity, or nurtures any desire to encourage it—but sometimes he thinks that if he hadn’t had the Yard, or Baker Street or John, then perhaps—)
He shakes himself. He’s being drawn in. He won’t allow it.
Moriarty catches his eye, gleaming at him. Then he starts on Sherlock’s fly.
It’s that, somehow, that makes him panic—at least, he thinks that’s what it is, it’s cold and somehow paralysing, not that struggle has done him much good anyway—and suddenly this feels realer and more urgent, even though Moriarty’s intentions have been clear all along. Moriarty pulls down his trousers and his boxers in one and the air on his skin, the awareness of being, for all intents and purposes, naked, does something to him that sticks in his throat and makes it hard to breathe.
“It’s a bit obvious, isn’t it?” he says, and is angry at his voice for the way it catches. (As though it makes any difference. Moriarty sees almost as clearly as he does; there are a hundred other little tells he would notice if Sherlock had managed to suppress this one.) “Rape. I would have hoped you’d be a little more inventive.”
Moriarty makes a sound against his hip, half a laugh and half a hum of contentment. Then he reaches for the tube of lubricant and twists the top off. He pauses, unbuttons the cuff of his shirt-sleeve, and rolls it up quite matter-of-factly before beginning to coat his palm. “Oh, sure,” he admits, with a cheerful shrug. “But I don’t lack all appreciation for the classics, you know. Some of them can be quite entertaining. Not that you’d know, of course.” He turns his head fractionally, eyes bright and sharp as pins. “And there’s the thing. It is new to you, isn’t it? No-one’s ever seen you like this. Not until me.”
He trails a finger, sticky with lubricant, up Sherlock’s thigh; curls his hand, with that same methodical gentleness, around his penis. It’s cold. Sherlock shivers.
“Patience,” Moriarty chides him, beginning to move his hand. “It’s a virtue, you know.”
Sherlock rolls his eyes, but remaining composed is a struggle. This is uncomfortable, it’s nothing he’s ever wanted or imagined, and try as he might he can’t help but feel his vulnerability, how raw and open he is.
(Moriarty is right. No-one has ever seen him like this. It’s nothing he’s ever wanted to give.)
After a moment, the cold wears off. Moriarty’s palm on him is steady and slick, and he feels the stirrings of an erection. It’s involuntary; he knows that. It means nothing. Still, he grits his teeth and wills his body to stop responding, feels a hot, embarrassed flush colour his face and chest when he fails.
Moriarty’s hand stills. He doesn’t laugh; he doesn’t need to. Sherlock can feel the vibration of his mirth at every point of contact, can see it in the predatory curl of his mouth. “Calm down, honey. I’m nowhere near finished with you yet.”
He removes his hand, and if only that were a relief. But then his fingers are dancing up Sherlock’s inner thigh, teasing at the cleft of his buttocks as Moriarty moves to kneel between his legs, forcing them apart. His eyes flutter closed, just briefly, and that’s involuntary, too, his body betraying his unwillingness to believe this is really happening.
Strange. He’s always thought himself stronger-minded than this. And that (only that) is the source of the tight, sick feeling in his gut, the thing he can’t help but name as shame.
“Ah, ah,” Moriarty warns him. “Eyes open.”
And he’s entirely certain—more so now than ever—that Moriarty is crazed enough to follow through on his earlier threat, so he has no choice but to open his eyes and let Moriarty look into them as he slides one finger in, smirking. The stretch and burn of it is expected intellectually but not viscerally, eliciting an answering sting behind his eyes, and the ring of muscle flutters as his body tries to reject the intrusion. (How disturbed is it of him, precisely, to be glad that it hurts? That there’s proof this is unwanted, un-asked for? As though there could be any doubt.)
Moriarty leans over him to croon in his ear: “Just relax. You’ll get used to it.” His free hand caresses Sherlock’s face, trails a thumb along one of his cheekbones.
“And if I don’t want to get used to it?” he snaps. Moriarty gives him a pitying look.
“Doesn’t make a lot of difference, I’m afraid.”
“Doesn’t it?” he says, and that makes Moriarty pause with a curious tilt of his head. The finger inside him stills, though it’s still there, he’s still so very aware of it. He wishes he could stop being. He tries. “You keep saying you know me. If you really did, perhaps you’d be able to persuade me into your bed instead of drugging me and handcuffing me to it.”
Moriarty actually laughs. “Oh, I’d prefer it if you came to me of your own accord, of course I would. Then you wouldn’t be able to pretend you’re not mine.” His expression darkens abruptly; the bared teeth are back. “And you are, you know. Because knowledge is power, and I do know you.” Without warning, he pushes in a second finger and scissors them, and Sherlock does his very best to shut out the sensation, to focus his attention elsewhere, but some mewling, childish part of his brain keeps insisting that this isn’t fair, he never asked to be opened up and explored like this, he’s fought so hard to keep himself shut-away and safe, and by the time he manages to shut it up he’s trembling, limbs twitching in reflexive protest.
And Moriarty just keeps on talking, eyes trained unwaveringly on Sherlock’s face. “In fact,” he says, looking immensely pleased with himself, as though some great revelation has just occurred to him, “I should think I know better than anyone else, by now. I’m the only one who’s ever seen you like this, aren’t I? Not brother dear, not your pet policeman, not even your little tin soldier. Think he’ll ever figure out he’s in love with you?” Sherlock doesn’t, can’t reply. He opens his mouth around a retort but what comes out is inarticulate, half-formed. Moriarty’s smile is smug. “Me neither. Still. You’ve got me now.”
I don’t want you, Sherlock wants to say, but then Moriarty crooks his fingers and finds a spot that makes hot, awful arousal jolt through him. It’s only a response to a physical stimulus; prostate stimulation gives some men near-instantaneous orgasms. He knows that, and he’s never cared a whit for his body’s impulses, so why on Earth should he start now?
He tells himself this again, as Moriarty continues to move his fingers. And again, and again.
He’s still shaking. He can’t make it stop.
By the time Moriarty stills again, he’s painfully, embarrassingly hard. Moriarty grins at him—conspiratorially, as though they’re sharing a joke—as he removes his fingers and starts to slick himself up. No condom, Sherlock’s brain supplies, and as though Moriarty has read his mind, he leans in close and murmurs, “One more reason I’m so glad you’re a virgin, love. No need for anything between us at all.” And then he’s pushing in, slowly and carefully but it still hurts, hurts enough that Sherlock actually feels his mind going blank, shrinking to a point of pain. It takes him a moment to realise that the choked little sound he’s half-conscious of hearing has come from his own mouth.
“I know you,” Moriarty sing-songs again, forcing awareness back upon him. “I know you in-side out.” He hums a soft laugh at his own joke, then leans down to kiss Sherlock on the mouth. His lips are soft, his kisses slow and undemanding, and they make Sherlock feel sicker than anything else. He wishes he had the strength left to turn away.
His erection has wilted, too, he realises, when Moriarty reaches between them to palm his cock with a disappointed look. He’s absurdly glad of the fact.
“Shame,” Moriarty says. “I did want to see what you look like when you come. Still.” He rocks his hips minutely. “I don’t suppose any of them has ever seen you cry, either.”
Sherlock squeezes his eyes shut, then, telling himself that he doesn’t care about Moriarty’s threat anymore; he’d rather never see again than be seen like this. It doesn’t matter, the rational part of his mind tries to remind him, it’s just flesh, it’s nothing, and it’ll be over soon (average time for a man to reach orgasm: 5-10 minutes, and Moriarty is clearly in a heightened state of arousal; it won’t be that long), and he won’t cry, he won’t give the bastard the satisfaction of being able to predict him, he won’t.
He can’t see Moriarty any more, but he can feel him (pulling out and then pushing in slow and deep, and it seems as though it’s never going to end), can’t escape the heat of his breath or the endearments he keeps repeating in that awful lullaby lilt. As though Sherlock is his lover. As though this is something they both want.
Moriarty’s hips stutter forward when he comes, and he collapses on top of Sherlock. His skin is clammy with sweat, sticking them together.
“Oh,” he laughs, after a moment, sounding pleased. “See? I know you.” He presses his lips to the corner of one of Sherlock’s eyes. They come away damp.
Once he’s cleaned himself off, Moriarty rummages in the bedside drawer again.
“I know it’s in here somewhere,” he mutters, sounding for all the world like Mrs Hudson looking for her keys. “Ah!”
It’s a camera. He rolls back on the bed and presses his face up close to Sherlock’s, as though they are two teenagers posing for a Facebook snap.
“I know you won’t forget,” he says. “And I won’t, either. Nice to have a souvenir, though, don’t you think? ‘Til next time.”
Next time. That means—what? That Moriarty is planning to let him go?
If so, it also means Moriarty is thoroughly certain of being able to get him back. Perhaps he even thinks that Sherlock will come to him voluntarily. He’s certainly deluded—but he’s sharp, too. It’s hard to tell what he believes.
God, maybe there’s a grain of truth in it, then. Moriarty knows him better than he knows Moriarty. Maybe he’s already won.
A strangled, involuntary little noise breaks out of Sherlock’s throat. He thinks that it might be a laugh.
“There, there.” Moriarty leans over him again. “Don’t fret, love. I know it’s confusing. I’ll give you a little time, though. Rest now.” He kisses the tip of Sherlock’s nose, thumb caressing his neck.
The sting of the needle is like sweet relief.
* * *
Sherlock wakes up sitting in a bus stop opposite 221B. It’s morning. A passer-by gives him a disgusted glance, no doubt taking him for a reveller still drunk from the night before. He studies his reflection in the bus-shelter glass and finds that that’s exactly what he looks like. His clothes are rumpled, and he looks exhausted, but there are no visible marks on him. The expected ache in his backside is faint; there’s little intimation of violence in it. He’s not sure whether to be glad about that.
John is standing at the sink when he enters the flat. “I wish you’d tell somebody when you’re planning on fucking off for two days at a time,” he grumbles, without looking up. “I bought you chow mein last night, it’s in the fridge if you want to microwave it. Because, don’t tell me, you haven’t had tea and I know breakfast’s an alien concept—” He looks up from the dishes, and falls silent, eyebrows drawing together in concern. “Jesus, Sherlock, you look out of it. Are you okay?”
“Fine,” he says, shortly. “I’m going to sleep. Don’t disturb me.”
John regards him for a second longer, then shrugs. “Suit yourself,” he says, and resumes washing the breakfast dishes.
In the doorway to his bedroom, Sherlock hesitates, seized briefly by the impulse to turn back and explain—to tell John what happened, to share it with someone else. It wouldn’t change things, wouldn’t restore his dignity or help him delete the fact that—just momentarily, trapped and helpless—he questioned himself. But it might go some way towards evening things out; might put the lie to that ‘better than anyone else’.
The urge doesn’t last, of course. John would stop what he’s doing and rush to his side, probably, with some awful stricken expression that would only make things worse. John would try to insist on his going to a doctor, or even the police. He’d have to keep remembering it.
He closes the bedroom door behind him.
* * *
“Post for you,” John says around a mouthful of toast, proffering a white envelope. “No address, hand-delivered, it looks like. One of your homeless lot?”
Sherlock glances at the envelope, the neat cursive handwriting that spells out his name (careful, the pen caressing the paper, like writing to a loved one), and gives a dismissive shake of his head. “Irrelevant,” he says, tossing it aside. “Old data.” But he already knows what he’ll find inside.
He waits until John has gone out for a newspaper before opening it. He burns the photograph in the kitchen sink, watching the glossy surface of it blister, his own face blacken and vanish alongside Moriarty’s.
John will be back, soon. He’ll complain about the smell in the flat, assuming it to be part of some experiment, and Sherlock will sniff and tell him that a doctor really ought to be more scientifically-minded. They’ll bicker in front of some awful television programme until the next case comes up, and if he appears a little quiet and distant, John won’t take it as anything out of the ordinary. He won’t change his habits; won’t allow himself to shudder at the memory of Moriarty's voice saying, next time. He will not wonder. Things will be just as they have always been.
He’ll never tell.