Full Psychological Recovery: Unlikely [Moriarty/Holmes, NC-17]
Hey Holmies. I've been MIA from LJ for a couple of years now, but I used to lurk here quite a bit. Despite being a massive fan of canon and several adaptations (especially Ritchieverse), I've never written much SH fic before. However, after writing this on request for one of my tumblr followers, I thought I'd share it here as well.
“Full Psychological Recovery: Unlikely”
Characters: Moriarty/Holmes plus Holmes/Watson HC
Rating: NC-17
Words: 2850
Warnings: Gore, Torture, Non-con. Oh, and spoilers for Game of Shadows.
Warnings should be taken seriously. I don't own these characters. I've tried to tag this but I've never posted here before, so sorry if something is incomplete!
Sherlock Holmes would never again be able to enjoy Schubert.
He was no stranger to pain, and he certainly didn’t go out of his way to avoid it. But this was no trip to the Punch Bowl; in fact, he couldn’t remember experiencing so much agony in his life. The moment the meat hook pierced his shoulder, the rapid catalogue of observations and deductions and possibilities was blown from Holmes’ mind as if by a bomb blast. He’d been only semi-aware of being hoisted up and suspended from the ceiling, gravity pitting his full weight against the lethal instrument. There was no room for his mind for anything but pain. And now Professor Moriarty was dancing with him, dragging him around the room in a sick spiral of sadistic mockery. Blood coursed down Holmes’ shirtfront. Already his grip was weakening on the length of rope above the hook, hands stinging and biceps quivering from pulling himself up to relieve the pressure. The Professor pulled him the other direction now, the iron continuing to dig cruelly into his flesh. Holmes clenched his teeth, trying not to vomit or slip into what would certainly be a welcome unconsciousness. He still had a mission here, if he could only clear a space for it in his pain-swamped awareness.
Moriarty swung him around one last time before steadying his dangling body, and for a brief instant the pain stopped escalating and dulled down to a steady throb around the hook’s cold metal. In that moment of reprieve, Holmes could see clearly again, and what he saw in his enemy’s face sent a chill down his spine. The flushed cheeks, the heightened breath, the widened pupils - he didn’t even need to glance down towards the Professor’s groin to know he was aroused.
Holmes’ stomach turned; he had not foreseen this. He’d perceived many subtleties in the villain’s expression during their last meeting, but lust hadn’t been among them. Apparently it took the sight of Holmes hanging there bleeding and helpless to excite James Moriarty’s baser instincts. The twisted sort who takes pleasure only in his own power. It was, if nothing else, perfectly logical.
Moriarty’s eyes glittered back at him blackly, and Holmes saw that he saw that Holmes understood his intent. Up to this point, there had been nothing Holmes hated more than being mistaken, no feeling more gutting to him than that fatal glimpse of the smug-faced Professor at the opera. But now, staring back into his enemy’s lecherous eyes, he’d give almost anything to be wrong.
In a flash like stopped time, he saw the action unravel. First, he’d need to be be lowered, enough to spark a false sense of hope, but more importantly, enough so Moriarty could seize his hips from behind and pull their bodies flush together. Holmes would defend himself only for the sake of his honor, for it would be futile: a jab straight back with his left elbow towards the villain’s nose would end with Holmes’ arm pinned to his chest. The desperate second effort he’d make with his right arm would require letting go of the rope, and he’d howl in pain as his full weight dropped down onto the meat hook and Moriarty blocked his attack anyway. The pain in his shoulder would redouble with the struggle, and with the muscles in his quivering arms turning to jelly, he’d only waste blood and energy trying to fight any more. The Professor would force Holmes’ trousers down, with an almost mechanical efficiency for such an animal impulse, and fondle him mockingly. Then he’d cruelly wrench Holmes’ scrotum while he freed his own member and have penetrated him before Holmes’ scream had expired. He’d take him in rough, hard bursts, each thrust jerking on the rope to aggravate the gaping shoulder wound. Images filed into place: the crushing grip of Moriarty’s arms, the fierce upward drive of his hips, the lusty rasp of his quickening breath on the back of Holmes’ neck. The tight flesh of his arse splitting as it stretched around Moriarty’s cock. The faintest stirrings of unwelcome pleasure as the villain’s hand circled his loins. The dank reek of blood and sweat and manhood. Moral insanity.
Then, time resumed, and Moriarty was behind him, and Holmes cursed the awful gifts that forced him to endure this twice - first in his mind and now in actuality. Each frame of reality supplanted and exceeded his mental calculations.Though he’d imagined the moves ahead of time, he couldn’t have predicted this unprecedented pain as Moriarty yanked him downward, thwarted his blows, tortured his shoulder, exposed his flesh.This must not register at an emotional level, he desperately told himself, but he found that impossible as he hung there like a piece of meat at the mercy of his greatest adversary. It made sense, and yet it made no sense at all.
Moriarty’s hands moved languidly over Holmes’ bare buttocks, too cruel a touch to be called a caress, and slid around to palm his cock with cool, meticulous fingers. “You have less…frontal development than I should have expected,” the Professor remarked, a sly delight in his voice. Then Moriarty gave Holmes’ genitals an excruciating clockwise twist that whited out his vision and almost masked the thick hard heat searing through his rectum. Holmes howled in agony, his eyes smarting with tears. It was really happening. He had always viewed physical damage with an almost clinical detachment, but he could not coolly detach himself from the fact that Moriarty was inside him. He couldn’t analyse the situation because he couldn’t analyse at all. He had ceased to be Sherlock Holmes altogether. Even on morphine his mind had never felt so numb and useless. Its once-clear surface was muddied with an emotion that was practically foreign to him, and it took him a moment to recognise it as shame.
Now he was twice-impaled, the rope slackening and tautening continually against his shoulder as Moriarty sodomised him. He trembled like the child he’d always and never been. Inside him, Moriarty’s cock felt massive. He could feel it tearing fissures in his anal tissue, and the thrusts took on a sickening moist quality as blood trickled hotly down the backs of his thighs. He desperately searched for something external to focus on, anything at all, but he couldn’t keep his eyes open long enough at one time to latch onto a visual. Audio, then: what was that strange, muffled squeak he couldn’t place? Not the hook creaking on its rope, surely. Again and again he tried to think - anything, anything to drown out the feeling - but all his rational processes drowned in sick waves of shame and torment. At last he realised the unidentified sound was his own pitiful whimpering, and for a flickering instant he almost hoped for death. Almost.
But he couldn’t die yet. There was something he still had to do. What was it, exactly? What…
He would not beg. Whimpering and screaming and bleeding from both ends, still he would not beg. Moriarty wished to break him, but Holmes would not give him that.
A flutter of sensation that was not pain welled up within him as Moriarty’s fingers dropped once more to Holmes’ loins. The detective’s cheeks flushed as his own body rebelled against him, twitching and stiffening at the evil touch. An indecent gasp escaped his lips, and he grit his teeth. Moriarty had once claimed to respect him. But this humiliation, this atrocity was the furthest thing from respect. He had to reject the pleasure as fiercely and futilely as he tried to resist the pain. And there was still so much pain. His hips bucked forward inadvertently against Moriarty’s hand, and the Professor gave the shadow of a laugh.
“Are you enjoying this game, Mr. Holmes?” he taunted, petting the detective’s cock. “I’m afraid that’s not allowed.” Then he squeezed Holmes’ hardening length with such bruising force that for an instant Holmes thought he might black out. And as his scream echoed through the chamber, he wished he had.
It felt like eternity before he recovered, and recovery was relative: after a blow like that, it was a relief to be able to feel anything else. Agony had become the default. Slowing his rhythm, Moriarty grabbed Holmes’ head by the hair and turned it head sideways, gazing into the detective’s tortured face. Holmes averted his eyes. He was still impaled on Moriarty’s cock, which had ground to a stop.
“I was initially attracted to you for your mind,” said the Professor, his breath short. “How disappointingly fragile that proved to be! Your body, on the other hand, is truly a marvel.” He ran his hand down over Holmes’ arse admiringly and smirked. “Doctor Watson is fortunate indeed.”
Leave Watson out of this! Holmes tried to say, but all he managed to choke out was “Watson,” and he wondered why the doctor hadn’t come yet, why hadn’t he come…
“Alas, the Doctor’s good fortune is about to end.” Moriarty purred. “Imagine the look on his face when he sees what’s become of you.”
A thousand retorts boiled on Holmes’ tongue, but he feared he’d vomit if he opened his mouth again. His heart thudded in his chest, unaware the blood it pumped was leaving his body each passing second. Watson.
“It’s rather a mercy, then, that he won’t escape my gunman,” Moriarty continued. With that he slowly pushed his forefinger into the gory mess of Holmes’ shoulder, right alongside the bloody metal. Holmes wailed. “And in the off chance that he does…well.” He drove the sharp digit in and out of the raw wound in time with his renewed assault on Holmes’ arse.
“Please…” Holmes gasped at last as Moriarty ravaged him. “Please…no more…” His breath came in shuddering half-sobs. He’d broken his only vow: he’d begged for mercy. He’d lost. Each second that passed felt distended, swollen, endless. It would end soon, Holmes repeated to himself. Soon. He just had to endure it.
At last Moriarty let out the faintest audible growl of a moan, filling Holmes with a surge of sticky heat. Holmes felt the pressure lift as his assailant disengaged from him, but the pain remained. He detected the sound of trousers buckling - Moriarty’s, not his own. Did he dare to hope that the fiend was finished with him? Weakly, he opened his eyes; he didn’t remember when he’d closed them. The glaze of satisfaction lingered in Moriarty’s face as he spun Holmes around to face him.
“Sherlock Holmes,” he declared, shaking his head. “If you could only see yourself now.” But Holmes could picture the broken, brutalised shell of himself reflected in the sick glee of the man’s gaze. His shoulder ached more with every heaving breath, and his rectum felt full of tiny knives. “Did you really think your dear Doctor would come to rescue his damsel in distress? Your mind is weaker than I’d supposed. To think the great Sherlock Holmes would be vulnerable to such delusions.”
Sherlock Holmes, the detective thought bitterly to himself. Sherlock Holmes was a lie, a figment of Watson’s idealising mind: pure and noble, cold and exacting. Sherlock Holmes would never permit his body to be violated like this. Sherlock Holmes would never beg for mercy. He couldn’t bring himself to meet Moriarty’s triumphant gaze, and his eyes fell to the Professor’s chest, where some of Holmes’ blood had splotched onto the front of his suit.
Or had it? Of course it had, but that wasn’t the bright red he was seeing. The top of the little notebook blazed like a wound upon Moriarty’s breast. Holmes tried not to look at it lest he give himself away, but at last now he remembered what he still had stowed in his waistcoat pocket. A hook of his own.
Holmes held the single objective in his mind as Moriarty began to lower him to the ground. Holmes clutched his chest, covertly palming the fake notebook in his waistcoat pocket. He waited for his window.
“Now then,” Moriarty said as he leaned in close. Their chests were centimetres apart. “To whom did you send the telegram?”
Holmes swallowed. His mind felt murky and weak. This was the single most crucial act, perhaps his last great act. With bloody, trembling fingers, he reached forward, so intently focused on his task that it eclipsed a fraction of the pain that still throbbed throughout his body. “To my brother Mycroft,” he rasped as he secretly slipped Moriarty’s invaluable record into his own pocket. He’d done it. Even after everything, he’d done it. And Moriarty hadn’t noticed. But the satisfaction he should have felt was tainted and provisional and buried in shame. He had evidence at last, but at what price? Did it even matter anymore?
Then the building came down upon them in a cascade of stone, and Holmes prayed they would both perish in the ruin.
*
The sound of Watson’s footsteps woke him minutes later. They were unmistakable, even through the fog that hung over his battered mind.
“Take your time,” Holmes groaned, but he wasn’t really joking. He’d forgotten nothing, and he dreaded Watson seeing him so degraded. He wished he could move his buried arms to pull his trousers up and hide the evidence. But Watson was already with him, kneeling in the rubble, lifting his heavy head.
“Always nice to see you, Watson,” Holmes smiled weakly, because somehow, despite everything, it was.
“Dear Lord…” the doctor gasped as he saw the hook still lodged in Holmes’ shoulder.
“I’m afraid…this is the end, old boy,” said Holmes. The thought of revealing his condition to Watson, of facing Moriarty again, of even standing…it was too much for him to bear.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Watson scoffed, but there was a trace of fear in his voice as he freed Holmes from the ghastly hook and pushed aside crushed stones.“We just need to get you out of here.”
“No, no, leave me.” Holmes fumbled for the red notebook in his pocket and held it aloft, shaking. “This…for Mycroft,” he rasped. And then he closed his eyes in feigned unconsciousness, because he wished for nothing more than that, and couldn’t bear to see Watson’s face when he discovered he’d been used like a common whore.
“You can’t give up now,” the doctor insisted, almost angry with fear as he gingerly raised Holmes’ blood-soaked torso from the rubble. “Mori-”
Holmes felt Watson go rigid with shock. Through closed eyes he still saw the doctor’s pained expression at the sight of Holmes’ trousers bunched around his knees, the bruises on his thighs and genitals, the milky pink fluid leaking from his buttocks.
“Oh…oh, Holmes -”
So it had happened, then. So it hadn’t been a nightmare. Holmes’ mind went black with shame.
“That sick bastard!” Watson cried. “What has he done to you?”
Holmes lay limp and still and did not answer. Any minute he feared he might be ill all over Watson.
“He’s signed his own death warrant is what he’s done.” Watson raged aloud to himself as he gently wiped the filth from Holmes’ body. Even in his traumatized state, the detective saw the irony of it: that with Holmes beaten into submission, it was Watson who would now drive the quest to stop Moriarty. “Of all the vile, twisted…”
“Please,” Holmes groaned, stirring at last as Watson eased his trousers back up around his waist. “Don’t speak of it.”
Watson held him close for a moment with a degree of tenderness Holmes hadn’t felt from him in months. Holmes’ body ached when Watson touched him, but he had neither the strength nor the heart to pull away. “I’m so sorry, Holmes,” Watson said, voice cracking. “I should have been at your side!”
Holmes shook his head weakly, unable to meet the dismayed blue eyes. The idea of Watson witnessing that act - or worse, suffering the same fate - was too much for his stomach to take. Watson just held him, unflinching, as he retched over the broken stone. “It’s alright,” Watson said as he stroked his hair, though they both knew it wasn’t.
“I don’t know how I shall face him again, Watson,” Holmes shivered. “I must, obviously, but I…”
“Don’t think about him,” Watson replied, cradling the wounded detective in his arms. “For once, I beg you, don’t think about him. You’re with me now.”
It seemed to Holmes that it was growing cold. Perhaps he was dying after all. He did not want to die a victim, but it didn’t seem like he had a choice, whatever happened now. Moriarty was somewhere in the wreckage, perhaps conscious and in earshot, and Moran…what had become of Moran?
“Don’t think,” Watson repeated firmly. “Just…stay with me and you’ll be safe. Promise.”
Holmes clasped Watson’s warm hand, felt the wedding band’s cool metal on his fourth digit, and nodded against the doctor’s chest.