Sherlock: Moriarty/Watson
Title: Non-Negotiable
Fandom: Sherlock (BBC)
Pairing: Moriarty/Watson
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: I don’t claim anything. Please don’t sue me.
Warnings: Potential trigger for humiliation.
Spoilers: For "The Great Game"
Summary: John finds his way into the well-manicured hands of the enemy.
AN: Written for thelistkeeper and his fiance for their birthday/anniversary. But I was late late late in proofreading and posting this. They asked for John in a collar and I made them an entirely too long and arduous fic. There may be an adjoining pwp because of the belatedness.
John never made it to Sarah’s that night. He hadn’t actually made it too far up the street from the flat before he was waylaid in the worst possible way.
And he should have known better, but at the time he had done quite enough thinking for the day. It had been exhausting, both physically and mentally, and before he could be wrapped up in something else (one of Sherlock’s household experiments, perhaps) he had made a point of escaping to one place he knew he could be at rest. Sarah was a nice woman, something he was quite certain he needed in his life at the moment. Best of all, she went to bed at a reasonable hour and didn’t mind him taking shelter on her couch. After that incident with the Black Lotus, he had honestly expected to have that budding relationship and his job nipped off completely. It would have been the smarter thing to do, really.
For some reason,though, she seemed to have decided that he was worth taking a chance, or else was taking mercy upon him. It’s not in Watson to turn it away, advise her of the sane thing, because he needs this. Or thinks he does. So on his way to Sarah’s flat, he’s not thinking about much more of the day’s case because, if he does, it’ll impede his sleep for the rest of the night. He’s thinking vinyl couch cushions and the buzzing white noise of the telly, and how one day it might be cotton bed sheets hitched around his hips. By the time he sees the masks rise out of the alley, it’s far too late.
They crash into him, a tangle of limbs, bare him up into darkness and onto the unforgiving metal floor of a nondescript van. It had crept up the street just out of his peripheral vision and now he’s kicking out of the shadow against his attackers as they toss him through the open door. He’s a military man and he won’t die easily, won’t give up even as the engine revs and the door slams with an air of finality, carrying him farther and farther away from Baker Street. It’s not much of a fight, though. Whoever they are, they’ve been waiting for him and there are hands all over him, shoving him down, crushing him beneath the weight of one or several bodies. Careless, because his head is slammed against the floor and suddenly there is light beneath his eyes and the tang of metal on his lips.
He’s in the dry heat of Afghanistan again, behind the rampart, and his lieutenant’s voice is the hiss of a motor. It dissolves from there.
----
He regains coherency to the peculiar sensation of his feet dragged over a floor. There isn’t any sound aside from breathing, his and those of his captors, who are carrying him beneath both his arms along a hallway. At least, Watson assumes it’s a hallway. Head lolled back into the hollow between his his shoulders, he’s able to perceive the impression of serial arches before the light burns a path right into his temporal lobe and has him wince his eyes shut. They’d cracked his head pretty good- not enough to give him a concussion, he thinks, but it was enough to put him out and leave him reeling like someone who had one too many the night before.
He swallows thickly, exhales through his nose, and tries to think. Where is he? Who has him? Mycroft is out of the question- this sort of force had never seemed necessary to Sherlock’s brother, eccentric as he seemed to be. If it was him, he would have just told him to get in the car and thrown in some pretty assistant woman as an extra incentive to stay docile. Besides that, he and Sherlock had finished up the case he’d needed done, so that only left--
Suddenly, he’s being shoved forward, feet instinctively moving to keep him upright. A flare of pain shoots up his right leg from the inarticulate shift of weight and he goes down, shamefully, in a heap upon a carpeted floor. His eyes flutter open to a blessedly dim room, something he automatically guesses to be a study from the silhouette of shelves. The only real light in the room is the one coming behind him from the open door to the hall and something unnatural out of the shape of a desk just above his line of vision. As John struggles to stand, rolling the weight onto his good leg, there’s a voice and the simultaneously weight of something between his shoulderblades, pushing him back down to his knees.
“I am soooo sorry, Mister Watson,” The voice lilts cheerily. It sends an unwarranted shudder down his spine, and there’s a small waft of air against his cheek as something passes by. “It wasn’t my intention to have you so roughed up, but good help is so hard to find. Especially in my line of work- one has to make... allowances.”
“Moriarty.” John replies dryly, and the ache he feels in his limbs helps to make the name sound even more contemptable.
The figure in his peripheral vision pauses for a moment, turns ever so slightly to him, before continuing its way to the desk he had seen once before. Moriarty is tall, like Sherlock, but he’s more slight of figure than Watson had imagined he might be.
Soft. His mind reminds him. He sounded so soft.
“You’re more clever than you let on, Johnny,” Comes the sardonic praise, and John can’t really think the timbre of his tone is anything less than grating. Obnoxious, perhaps even tittery, but he would never call it soft. There’s an accent, Irish if he isn’t mistaken. “Though I suppose it’s just unfair of me to judge your intelligence in the presence of Sherlock Holmes. It’s like comparing a monkey to Einstein- it isn’t even on the same scale.”
Some unseen gesture is made and the pressure is removed from his back. John sits up, rolls the kinks out of his shoulders. He’s well aware of his situation now and knows trying to leave would be fruitless and just embarassing. Moriarty will want him alive, if his private conclusions are correct, but he isn’t going to push it. The terrorist has proved just how little he regards humanity, his victims. He’d had that old woman and all of the people near her flat blown up simply because she had begun to describe his voice. He certainly wouldn’t think twice about killing John if he proved to be more trouble than he was worth.
“So, doc, d’ya know why yer here, then?” Moriarty challenges him, and by now he’s made it to the desk. The light, Watson has come to realize, is the overbright, otherworldly glow of a laptop. It throws Moriarty’s features into sharp relief, a thin visage carved from marble with large, hollow eyes. He’s young- that too shocks John. He looks even younger than Serlock, if not perhaps the same age. The image is almost rediculous; he’s horribly reminded of a little boy dressing up in their father’s business clothes. There’s nothing innocent in his motions, however. They are the tempered, swaggering movements of a predator.
“I’m the fifth pip.”
It’s a grim confession- how could have have been so stupid? Moriarty’s smile is a sharp gash under the darkness of his eyes, and for one rediculous moment, John is seeing a mask, just some imitation of a human face with nothing but a void inside. It’s very disconcerting.
“Veeery good!” Moriarty sits down and there is the brief squeak and give of leather. He seems to disregard John for a moment in favor of clicking at something on the computer screen, head propped on one hand with his fingers curling childishly into the seam of his mouth. Whatever he’s seen makes him smile even wider, then hide it away giddily behind his palm. “We still have about an hour or so to ourselves before we’re to meet him. Plenty of time to have a chat!”
With that, he’s leaning back, slinging his legs and polished shoes up onto the sturdy desk in a pose that will push him back into the shadow. John’s heart begins to sink into his chest at the man’s words, for he can only be referring to Sherlock Holmes, which means his flatmate has gone ahead and continued the game without him. He wasn’t that surprised, really- Holmes never slept unless he had to. It was too dull and unproductive of him, and he despised idle hands and a stagnant mind more than anything else in the world.
It was something that had certainly kept Watson on his toes, not knowing when he might be awoken to some random disaster or Holmes in need of his opinion right that very instance. The latter had been solved for a time when he’d clocked Holmes good for startling him out of one of his numerous dreams of the war. Unintentional, of course. After that, Sherlock had taken to just tossing things at him if he wanted him up, his version of a gentle persuasion in rousing him. Watson had woken up with a mouth full of toilet paper one morning, wrapped around that damnable skull when Holmes had attemed to wake him from REM only to decide it really wasn’t that important. It was just another good reason to go spend the night at Sarah’s when he required real sleep.
Did Holmes know that Watson had been captured? No, he couldn’t possibly. Moriarty’s method of revealing a victim had always been to have them use their own voice. And if they were arranging a meeting now, it meant Sherlock was onto something, or else had called Moriarty out to some true duel. John hoped that his friend knew what he was getting into, but realistically he knew such thoughts were simply wishful. As brilliant as Sherlock Holmes indubitably was, he was especially reckless. It was one of the reasons John went chasing his coat. It was as endearing as it was infuriating.
“Quite the eccentric, our Sherlock. Tell me, Johnny, what’s it like to live with him? It must be exhausting, not to mention demeaning. He certainly doesn’t seem humble. ‘Spectacularly ignorant’ mmm. And yet, he is hardly seen without you these days.”
“Do you fancy him?” John implores, nastily. He is awarded with a chortle. Before this moment, he had truly thought such a word to be the fancy of writers, never applicable to real life. But there was no other word for it. Moriarty chortled.
“I adore him,” He is told without shame. “He and I ain’t so dif’rnt. Tell me, how has he enjoyed my little games?”
“He didn’t much care about the people you killed.”
“Oh, I doubt he did. I doubt he cared much at all for any of them,” Moriarty has clearly mistaken the intent of his statement, but Watson feels little need to comment, espeically since the man continues, “You, however... Well, we’ll just have ta see. I admit, I have been so curious ever since I saw you nipping at his heels.”
“Jealous?” John has told himself he wouldn’t go slapping the bull, but he can’t help but press, a falcon that beats its wings against the cage of its captor.
Moriarty laughs again, softer this time, but it’s still strange enough to make the hair on the back of Watson’s neck stand on end. He lifts his chin and straightens, unconsciously trying to regain some dignity for himself. Consciously, he makes the decision that he will say nothing more to this terrorist, that he won’t give him the satisfaction of so much as a retort.
“You’re just a dog, Johnny-boy.” Says the murderer, and there’s no pitch in his tone this time. The man shifts his feet aside on the desk, as if to better look at him from his point of repose in his cushy office chair. Watson knows his jaw has tightened because he can feel his teeth grind and squeal. Then, the shape of a pale hand becomes obvious in the dim glow of the idling laptop, beckoning. At first, John thinks it is for him and silently tells Moriarty where he can put it, but his peripheral vision at his ears pick up on a pair of feet and long legs moving past him. One of the masked thugs bends low over the chair, and while John can hear the murmur of an exchange between master and hired gun, he can’t exactly make it out. The person disappears just as quickly as they came, and John is left to sit in the silence without so much as the man’s voice. A voice, he is reminded, that dozens died in order to hide.
---
It takes all of five minutes before the barrel of a gun is pressed against his temple. Something falls against his thighs, and if he wasn’t so stiff, he might have jumped at its appearance.
“Put it on,” Chirps Moriarty.
It’s a collar and chain. Watson picks it up, feeling the stiff but smooth leather slide over his hands as he brings it up to make sure. Both shock and outrage strike him at once, the puff of air from his lips like a scoff. The click of the safety coming off the gun is all he hears before his fingers are wrapping the bond around his neck on their own accord. There’s a definite smell wafting up from the collar, the oily smell of leather and something pungent, musky. Short hair spatters his fingers when he takes them away.
“That’s a good boy,” Comes the croon, and the feet disappear from the desk, the chair creaks as the man in it is turned upright again. John fights back a growl, feeling as if it would just make matters worse. What the bloody Hell? The gun disappears, though, and the chain slips off of his knees as the intimidator walks it over to Moriarty. “Be a dear and shut the door on your way out, won’t you?”
John’s breathing has increased significantly at this point, because the very last thing he was expecting from this affair was to have himself walked around the room like a damn poodle for the kicks of a madman. And yet, he is beginning to make sense of it all, of Moriarty, who is decidedly trying to make a point, or else likes to press his position of power. Probably both. Watson has never felt so much ire before - he is not a hateful man by nature, and the circumstances that formed his life have made him very patient in the face of many things. His injuries and his experience have made him cynical, pessimistic, but never spiteful. Moriarty is pressing it.
And then he’s pulling it. The chain. There’s no light but that of the computer laptop, and the murderer’s voice is a breath of laughter.
“Come.”
It’s humiliating, but there is very little choice but to follow the pull of the chain into Moriarty's eager hands. For a time the man works in steady tugs, allowing the metal to slip over his pale fingers and pool between his thighs while John inarticulately clambers after it. He expects at any moment for those hands to grow impatient and cruel, to yank him over onto carpet by the throat and crack the vertebrae in his neck, paralyzing him for good if not instantaneously killing him. It wouldn't be too difficult. But no, apparently it pleased the younger man to watch him crawl like a dog to its master, or perhaps to watch him flounder a little and favor his right leg as he did so.
The chain was far too short, because truth be told Watson would have preferred wallowing over being so close to the monster who wore a child's face and derided him in a pitchy, Irish timbre. Two fingers dip beneath the thick leather of his collar, strong and demanding as they force John's head up to look at the face of his captor. To relax the strain on the back of his neck some he'll have to sit up, get that much closer to the madman, and god help him, he does. He looks up at Moriarty and gets his first good look at the man's face, the details of his face a little less obscured by the distance in the dark. He is unaware that his jaw goes momentarily slack.
"Yeeees," The criminal drawls pleasantly, and Watson can see his eyelids lower slowly beneath a set of oily, well-manicured brows, "I like it a lot, Johnny-boy. It's very you."
"You." John isn't echoing the man- he's just come to a rather horrifying realization. He knows this man. Moriarty's face is splitting again with his wide grin, only this time John can see each and every one of his sharp little teeth. It's a threat, a Cheshire grin, and Watson wants nothing more from life at that moment than to put his fist through it. He can't, though, not when he may have the chance of getting out of here alive, of perhaps tipping Sherlock off so his friend can run while he still has the chance. He'll have to play his part in the madman's game if he's to have any hope at all.
"Me!"
It was him, the man from the hospital that Sherlock had scorned without a second glance. John, however, being ever polite, had gotten a good look at him as he apologetically made ammends for his socially inept friend. Dear god, he had come smiling to greet them, even flirting with Sherlock a little before he was uncermoniously dismissed from the room. They had just let him go. Jim from IT with lime green underpants hitched high enough to flag down a jet, but, as it turned out, deflected proper attention.
“Jim Moriarty,” As if he can hear Watson’s thoughts, confirming, winking slyly down at him. Moriarty has large, expressive eyes, black as coal and crinkled just faintly at their edges with undisguised delight. “Take a look.”
Jim turns the doctor’s head toward the computer screen, where there seem to be several dark panes of camera views at various angles. There must be about a dozen, most of them focused on streets from what he can tell. Traffic is slow this time of night, and there are very few headlights making their sluggish way across the murky pavement. One of the cameras, though, faces a window, one whose drapes he recognizes all too well after a second’s study. One of Moriarty’s fingers taps the particular pane as if to bring his attention around.
“Each one of these camera views are coming from a high-powered scope nestled atop an L92 sniper rifle. Neat, hm? Now you’re a military man, Johnny, I know that. Care to take a guess at how far one of these can shoot?”
John knows, but he doesn’t speak. His breath is shuddering out slowly through his nose and he’s trying not to focus on the strain in his neck and leg.
“Six hundred meters for an accurate shot. Now, I’m almost certain our boy has narry an intention of going anywhere but our rendesvous poiny but--”
Moriarty is babbling on, but John stops paying attention when he sees a flash of color past the window of 221B Baker Street. Sherlock is pacing the flat’s living room, head down, impatient, periodically drawing things from his pockets, flopping down on one of the chairs only to be up again. Eventually, he can see the man pulling on his coat and the door closes as he leaves and begins to descend the stairs to the ground floor. John swallows thickly.
There’s a jerk at the collar that makes his eyes snap back up to Moriarty, who is regarding him with what seems a mix of curiosity and aggression. John stares back, dim as he can manage, offering nothing. Except it’s too late, and he can’t suppress the way his body tightens under the slide of a thumb against his jaw.
“Now you know the stakes, m’boy.”
“What do you want?” John grits, and he knows Moriarty will feel the grind of his teeth the way his fingers are pressing into his skin. His neck is beginning to hurt, but he refuses to lean any closer than he has to. Experimentally, he begins to sit back on his heels, surprised when he slips free of the chilled fingers. The chain attached to the collar slides back into Moriarty’s palm; he seems thoughtful, except John can feel the chill of his gaze beginning to sear its way into him. It’s decidedly disturbing, like a cat that plays with its meal before devouring it. The thought of Moriarty swallowing him whole is ludicrous, but the level of foreboding does not stray far from just that.
“I think I’d like to see just how well Sherlock Holmes has trained his little pet,” It’s a sort of leer now, no better than the hollow gaze of calculation a moment ago. Possibly worse. Before Watson can so much as eek out something sarcastic, the man is leaning back in his seat, thumbing aside a button on his slacks with his free hand. It’s effortless and without shame, as if Moriarty were simply beginning to unravel a scarf. Of course, John’s eyes can’t help but be drawn to his hands, so stark against the dark suit, and it is becoming increasingly clear just where Moriarty has begun to feel most satisfied with his lesson.
Oh god.
This can't be happening.
Fandom: Sherlock (BBC)
Pairing: Moriarty/Watson
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: I don’t claim anything. Please don’t sue me.
Warnings: Potential trigger for humiliation.
Spoilers: For "The Great Game"
Summary: John finds his way into the well-manicured hands of the enemy.
AN: Written for thelistkeeper and his fiance for their birthday/anniversary. But I was late late late in proofreading and posting this. They asked for John in a collar and I made them an entirely too long and arduous fic. There may be an adjoining pwp because of the belatedness.
John never made it to Sarah’s that night. He hadn’t actually made it too far up the street from the flat before he was waylaid in the worst possible way.
And he should have known better, but at the time he had done quite enough thinking for the day. It had been exhausting, both physically and mentally, and before he could be wrapped up in something else (one of Sherlock’s household experiments, perhaps) he had made a point of escaping to one place he knew he could be at rest. Sarah was a nice woman, something he was quite certain he needed in his life at the moment. Best of all, she went to bed at a reasonable hour and didn’t mind him taking shelter on her couch. After that incident with the Black Lotus, he had honestly expected to have that budding relationship and his job nipped off completely. It would have been the smarter thing to do, really.
For some reason,though, she seemed to have decided that he was worth taking a chance, or else was taking mercy upon him. It’s not in Watson to turn it away, advise her of the sane thing, because he needs this. Or thinks he does. So on his way to Sarah’s flat, he’s not thinking about much more of the day’s case because, if he does, it’ll impede his sleep for the rest of the night. He’s thinking vinyl couch cushions and the buzzing white noise of the telly, and how one day it might be cotton bed sheets hitched around his hips. By the time he sees the masks rise out of the alley, it’s far too late.
They crash into him, a tangle of limbs, bare him up into darkness and onto the unforgiving metal floor of a nondescript van. It had crept up the street just out of his peripheral vision and now he’s kicking out of the shadow against his attackers as they toss him through the open door. He’s a military man and he won’t die easily, won’t give up even as the engine revs and the door slams with an air of finality, carrying him farther and farther away from Baker Street. It’s not much of a fight, though. Whoever they are, they’ve been waiting for him and there are hands all over him, shoving him down, crushing him beneath the weight of one or several bodies. Careless, because his head is slammed against the floor and suddenly there is light beneath his eyes and the tang of metal on his lips.
He’s in the dry heat of Afghanistan again, behind the rampart, and his lieutenant’s voice is the hiss of a motor. It dissolves from there.
----
He regains coherency to the peculiar sensation of his feet dragged over a floor. There isn’t any sound aside from breathing, his and those of his captors, who are carrying him beneath both his arms along a hallway. At least, Watson assumes it’s a hallway. Head lolled back into the hollow between his his shoulders, he’s able to perceive the impression of serial arches before the light burns a path right into his temporal lobe and has him wince his eyes shut. They’d cracked his head pretty good- not enough to give him a concussion, he thinks, but it was enough to put him out and leave him reeling like someone who had one too many the night before.
He swallows thickly, exhales through his nose, and tries to think. Where is he? Who has him? Mycroft is out of the question- this sort of force had never seemed necessary to Sherlock’s brother, eccentric as he seemed to be. If it was him, he would have just told him to get in the car and thrown in some pretty assistant woman as an extra incentive to stay docile. Besides that, he and Sherlock had finished up the case he’d needed done, so that only left--
Suddenly, he’s being shoved forward, feet instinctively moving to keep him upright. A flare of pain shoots up his right leg from the inarticulate shift of weight and he goes down, shamefully, in a heap upon a carpeted floor. His eyes flutter open to a blessedly dim room, something he automatically guesses to be a study from the silhouette of shelves. The only real light in the room is the one coming behind him from the open door to the hall and something unnatural out of the shape of a desk just above his line of vision. As John struggles to stand, rolling the weight onto his good leg, there’s a voice and the simultaneously weight of something between his shoulderblades, pushing him back down to his knees.
“I am soooo sorry, Mister Watson,” The voice lilts cheerily. It sends an unwarranted shudder down his spine, and there’s a small waft of air against his cheek as something passes by. “It wasn’t my intention to have you so roughed up, but good help is so hard to find. Especially in my line of work- one has to make... allowances.”
“Moriarty.” John replies dryly, and the ache he feels in his limbs helps to make the name sound even more contemptable.
The figure in his peripheral vision pauses for a moment, turns ever so slightly to him, before continuing its way to the desk he had seen once before. Moriarty is tall, like Sherlock, but he’s more slight of figure than Watson had imagined he might be.
Soft. His mind reminds him. He sounded so soft.
“You’re more clever than you let on, Johnny,” Comes the sardonic praise, and John can’t really think the timbre of his tone is anything less than grating. Obnoxious, perhaps even tittery, but he would never call it soft. There’s an accent, Irish if he isn’t mistaken. “Though I suppose it’s just unfair of me to judge your intelligence in the presence of Sherlock Holmes. It’s like comparing a monkey to Einstein- it isn’t even on the same scale.”
Some unseen gesture is made and the pressure is removed from his back. John sits up, rolls the kinks out of his shoulders. He’s well aware of his situation now and knows trying to leave would be fruitless and just embarassing. Moriarty will want him alive, if his private conclusions are correct, but he isn’t going to push it. The terrorist has proved just how little he regards humanity, his victims. He’d had that old woman and all of the people near her flat blown up simply because she had begun to describe his voice. He certainly wouldn’t think twice about killing John if he proved to be more trouble than he was worth.
“So, doc, d’ya know why yer here, then?” Moriarty challenges him, and by now he’s made it to the desk. The light, Watson has come to realize, is the overbright, otherworldly glow of a laptop. It throws Moriarty’s features into sharp relief, a thin visage carved from marble with large, hollow eyes. He’s young- that too shocks John. He looks even younger than Serlock, if not perhaps the same age. The image is almost rediculous; he’s horribly reminded of a little boy dressing up in their father’s business clothes. There’s nothing innocent in his motions, however. They are the tempered, swaggering movements of a predator.
“I’m the fifth pip.”
It’s a grim confession- how could have have been so stupid? Moriarty’s smile is a sharp gash under the darkness of his eyes, and for one rediculous moment, John is seeing a mask, just some imitation of a human face with nothing but a void inside. It’s very disconcerting.
“Veeery good!” Moriarty sits down and there is the brief squeak and give of leather. He seems to disregard John for a moment in favor of clicking at something on the computer screen, head propped on one hand with his fingers curling childishly into the seam of his mouth. Whatever he’s seen makes him smile even wider, then hide it away giddily behind his palm. “We still have about an hour or so to ourselves before we’re to meet him. Plenty of time to have a chat!”
With that, he’s leaning back, slinging his legs and polished shoes up onto the sturdy desk in a pose that will push him back into the shadow. John’s heart begins to sink into his chest at the man’s words, for he can only be referring to Sherlock Holmes, which means his flatmate has gone ahead and continued the game without him. He wasn’t that surprised, really- Holmes never slept unless he had to. It was too dull and unproductive of him, and he despised idle hands and a stagnant mind more than anything else in the world.
It was something that had certainly kept Watson on his toes, not knowing when he might be awoken to some random disaster or Holmes in need of his opinion right that very instance. The latter had been solved for a time when he’d clocked Holmes good for startling him out of one of his numerous dreams of the war. Unintentional, of course. After that, Sherlock had taken to just tossing things at him if he wanted him up, his version of a gentle persuasion in rousing him. Watson had woken up with a mouth full of toilet paper one morning, wrapped around that damnable skull when Holmes had attemed to wake him from REM only to decide it really wasn’t that important. It was just another good reason to go spend the night at Sarah’s when he required real sleep.
Did Holmes know that Watson had been captured? No, he couldn’t possibly. Moriarty’s method of revealing a victim had always been to have them use their own voice. And if they were arranging a meeting now, it meant Sherlock was onto something, or else had called Moriarty out to some true duel. John hoped that his friend knew what he was getting into, but realistically he knew such thoughts were simply wishful. As brilliant as Sherlock Holmes indubitably was, he was especially reckless. It was one of the reasons John went chasing his coat. It was as endearing as it was infuriating.
“Quite the eccentric, our Sherlock. Tell me, Johnny, what’s it like to live with him? It must be exhausting, not to mention demeaning. He certainly doesn’t seem humble. ‘Spectacularly ignorant’ mmm. And yet, he is hardly seen without you these days.”
“Do you fancy him?” John implores, nastily. He is awarded with a chortle. Before this moment, he had truly thought such a word to be the fancy of writers, never applicable to real life. But there was no other word for it. Moriarty chortled.
“I adore him,” He is told without shame. “He and I ain’t so dif’rnt. Tell me, how has he enjoyed my little games?”
“He didn’t much care about the people you killed.”
“Oh, I doubt he did. I doubt he cared much at all for any of them,” Moriarty has clearly mistaken the intent of his statement, but Watson feels little need to comment, espeically since the man continues, “You, however... Well, we’ll just have ta see. I admit, I have been so curious ever since I saw you nipping at his heels.”
“Jealous?” John has told himself he wouldn’t go slapping the bull, but he can’t help but press, a falcon that beats its wings against the cage of its captor.
Moriarty laughs again, softer this time, but it’s still strange enough to make the hair on the back of Watson’s neck stand on end. He lifts his chin and straightens, unconsciously trying to regain some dignity for himself. Consciously, he makes the decision that he will say nothing more to this terrorist, that he won’t give him the satisfaction of so much as a retort.
“You’re just a dog, Johnny-boy.” Says the murderer, and there’s no pitch in his tone this time. The man shifts his feet aside on the desk, as if to better look at him from his point of repose in his cushy office chair. Watson knows his jaw has tightened because he can feel his teeth grind and squeal. Then, the shape of a pale hand becomes obvious in the dim glow of the idling laptop, beckoning. At first, John thinks it is for him and silently tells Moriarty where he can put it, but his peripheral vision at his ears pick up on a pair of feet and long legs moving past him. One of the masked thugs bends low over the chair, and while John can hear the murmur of an exchange between master and hired gun, he can’t exactly make it out. The person disappears just as quickly as they came, and John is left to sit in the silence without so much as the man’s voice. A voice, he is reminded, that dozens died in order to hide.
---
It takes all of five minutes before the barrel of a gun is pressed against his temple. Something falls against his thighs, and if he wasn’t so stiff, he might have jumped at its appearance.
“Put it on,” Chirps Moriarty.
It’s a collar and chain. Watson picks it up, feeling the stiff but smooth leather slide over his hands as he brings it up to make sure. Both shock and outrage strike him at once, the puff of air from his lips like a scoff. The click of the safety coming off the gun is all he hears before his fingers are wrapping the bond around his neck on their own accord. There’s a definite smell wafting up from the collar, the oily smell of leather and something pungent, musky. Short hair spatters his fingers when he takes them away.
“That’s a good boy,” Comes the croon, and the feet disappear from the desk, the chair creaks as the man in it is turned upright again. John fights back a growl, feeling as if it would just make matters worse. What the bloody Hell? The gun disappears, though, and the chain slips off of his knees as the intimidator walks it over to Moriarty. “Be a dear and shut the door on your way out, won’t you?”
John’s breathing has increased significantly at this point, because the very last thing he was expecting from this affair was to have himself walked around the room like a damn poodle for the kicks of a madman. And yet, he is beginning to make sense of it all, of Moriarty, who is decidedly trying to make a point, or else likes to press his position of power. Probably both. Watson has never felt so much ire before - he is not a hateful man by nature, and the circumstances that formed his life have made him very patient in the face of many things. His injuries and his experience have made him cynical, pessimistic, but never spiteful. Moriarty is pressing it.
And then he’s pulling it. The chain. There’s no light but that of the computer laptop, and the murderer’s voice is a breath of laughter.
“Come.”
It’s humiliating, but there is very little choice but to follow the pull of the chain into Moriarty's eager hands. For a time the man works in steady tugs, allowing the metal to slip over his pale fingers and pool between his thighs while John inarticulately clambers after it. He expects at any moment for those hands to grow impatient and cruel, to yank him over onto carpet by the throat and crack the vertebrae in his neck, paralyzing him for good if not instantaneously killing him. It wouldn't be too difficult. But no, apparently it pleased the younger man to watch him crawl like a dog to its master, or perhaps to watch him flounder a little and favor his right leg as he did so.
The chain was far too short, because truth be told Watson would have preferred wallowing over being so close to the monster who wore a child's face and derided him in a pitchy, Irish timbre. Two fingers dip beneath the thick leather of his collar, strong and demanding as they force John's head up to look at the face of his captor. To relax the strain on the back of his neck some he'll have to sit up, get that much closer to the madman, and god help him, he does. He looks up at Moriarty and gets his first good look at the man's face, the details of his face a little less obscured by the distance in the dark. He is unaware that his jaw goes momentarily slack.
"Yeeees," The criminal drawls pleasantly, and Watson can see his eyelids lower slowly beneath a set of oily, well-manicured brows, "I like it a lot, Johnny-boy. It's very you."
"You." John isn't echoing the man- he's just come to a rather horrifying realization. He knows this man. Moriarty's face is splitting again with his wide grin, only this time John can see each and every one of his sharp little teeth. It's a threat, a Cheshire grin, and Watson wants nothing more from life at that moment than to put his fist through it. He can't, though, not when he may have the chance of getting out of here alive, of perhaps tipping Sherlock off so his friend can run while he still has the chance. He'll have to play his part in the madman's game if he's to have any hope at all.
"Me!"
It was him, the man from the hospital that Sherlock had scorned without a second glance. John, however, being ever polite, had gotten a good look at him as he apologetically made ammends for his socially inept friend. Dear god, he had come smiling to greet them, even flirting with Sherlock a little before he was uncermoniously dismissed from the room. They had just let him go. Jim from IT with lime green underpants hitched high enough to flag down a jet, but, as it turned out, deflected proper attention.
“Jim Moriarty,” As if he can hear Watson’s thoughts, confirming, winking slyly down at him. Moriarty has large, expressive eyes, black as coal and crinkled just faintly at their edges with undisguised delight. “Take a look.”
Jim turns the doctor’s head toward the computer screen, where there seem to be several dark panes of camera views at various angles. There must be about a dozen, most of them focused on streets from what he can tell. Traffic is slow this time of night, and there are very few headlights making their sluggish way across the murky pavement. One of the cameras, though, faces a window, one whose drapes he recognizes all too well after a second’s study. One of Moriarty’s fingers taps the particular pane as if to bring his attention around.
“Each one of these camera views are coming from a high-powered scope nestled atop an L92 sniper rifle. Neat, hm? Now you’re a military man, Johnny, I know that. Care to take a guess at how far one of these can shoot?”
John knows, but he doesn’t speak. His breath is shuddering out slowly through his nose and he’s trying not to focus on the strain in his neck and leg.
“Six hundred meters for an accurate shot. Now, I’m almost certain our boy has narry an intention of going anywhere but our rendesvous poiny but--”
Moriarty is babbling on, but John stops paying attention when he sees a flash of color past the window of 221B Baker Street. Sherlock is pacing the flat’s living room, head down, impatient, periodically drawing things from his pockets, flopping down on one of the chairs only to be up again. Eventually, he can see the man pulling on his coat and the door closes as he leaves and begins to descend the stairs to the ground floor. John swallows thickly.
There’s a jerk at the collar that makes his eyes snap back up to Moriarty, who is regarding him with what seems a mix of curiosity and aggression. John stares back, dim as he can manage, offering nothing. Except it’s too late, and he can’t suppress the way his body tightens under the slide of a thumb against his jaw.
“Now you know the stakes, m’boy.”
“What do you want?” John grits, and he knows Moriarty will feel the grind of his teeth the way his fingers are pressing into his skin. His neck is beginning to hurt, but he refuses to lean any closer than he has to. Experimentally, he begins to sit back on his heels, surprised when he slips free of the chilled fingers. The chain attached to the collar slides back into Moriarty’s palm; he seems thoughtful, except John can feel the chill of his gaze beginning to sear its way into him. It’s decidedly disturbing, like a cat that plays with its meal before devouring it. The thought of Moriarty swallowing him whole is ludicrous, but the level of foreboding does not stray far from just that.
“I think I’d like to see just how well Sherlock Holmes has trained his little pet,” It’s a sort of leer now, no better than the hollow gaze of calculation a moment ago. Possibly worse. Before Watson can so much as eek out something sarcastic, the man is leaning back in his seat, thumbing aside a button on his slacks with his free hand. It’s effortless and without shame, as if Moriarty were simply beginning to unravel a scarf. Of course, John’s eyes can’t help but be drawn to his hands, so stark against the dark suit, and it is becoming increasingly clear just where Moriarty has begun to feel most satisfied with his lesson.
Oh god.
This can't be happening.