Sherlock Holmes: Toppled
Title: Toppled
Characters/Pairing: Moriarty/Holmes
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Spoilers for A Game of Shadows. Rape, bondage, other violence.
Word Count: ~4300
Disclaimer: Not my characters. Not for profit.
Summary: Did Holmes really think Moriarty would do anything as prosaic as sit, play chess, and chat? Written for a kinkmeme prompt for Moriarty raping Holmes, but with very specific kinks.
Author's Notes: OK. I've only seen the new movie once so far and will be unable to see it again until after March 10th (sometimes I hate you, Japan!). I've watched and rewatched some clips with Moriarty in them, and he stayed with me (god, I somehow cannot stop looking at the picture that is the basis for my icon), but I'm still not 100% confident with my Harris!Moriarty. ... But I just can't wait until March to write my Moriarty/Holmes...
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"Here we are. Don't want you to catch cold." Holmes felt a shiver dance lightly through his limbs at the words. The indefinite threat looming behind their mild delivery lent them a wealth of meanings, none of them pleasant, that the individual words could never contain. A sharp chill shot down his spine in contrary response to the fur now draped over his shoulders. The icy menace of Moriarty’s form seemed to seep through the dark pelt from the professor’s hands, freezing Holmes more than the misty Alpine air. That cold (“fear,” his ruthlessly honest, analytical mind defined in spite of his pride’s denial) seemed to ice his vocal chords, preventing the witty response he likely should have been making.
Move away, he willed the insane genius behind him as the grip on his shoulders continued too long, too… predatory. The almost possessive curl of Moriarty’s fingers was disquieting, not to mention painful on his injured shoulder. The pain. He focused on that well-accustomed sensation, infinitely preferable to the others that were rising in him as the other man leaned over him, body oppressively close, beard brushing unpleasantly against his hair, breath far too intimately steaming his ear. Partially immobilized by fur and adversary, Holmes reached out to the chessboard with his good hand and drew a steadying breath in preparation for a pointed reminder of their business.
“The game’s already over,” Moriarty answered his unspoken words softly, breathing them against the back of Holmes’ ear, “Holmes.” Unexpected, overwhelming pain racked the detective then as, in time with the whispered caress of his name, Moriarty’s fingers dug strongly into his wounded shoulder in vicious counterpoint. Instinctively, Holmes’ mouth opened further to free the startled cry of agony that was growing inside him.
“Armph!” The shout was stifled almost immediately as the hand he could have sworn was still on his good shoulder pushed a compact wad of cloth into his mouth (“linen, clean, likely a handkerchief,” his senses observed, independent of his will). Still reeling, dizzy with the pain on which he’d focused, Holmes could not fight off the hands that tied something ("narrow silk, hint of cologne: tie") over his mouth or the arm that pressed him down hard into the table. Too many hands, he thought dimly, before his nemesis’ voice clarified the inconsistency.
“The rope, Moran.” A clear, logical corner of the detective’s brain duly noted that the number of his captors had doubled. A corner that was anything but reacted viscerally to the actual meaning of the words, sending panicked impulses to mouth and limbs. A sound that would have been “no” had him mouth been free hummed senselessly around the gag as his feet pushed against stone floor and his arms fought their current entrapment.
His struggles were savagely yet efficiently halted by simultaneous, sharp jabs to both the wound in his shoulder and the one in his ankle. Incapacitating waves of pain radiated out from those two centers, dragging his consciousness toward the sea of oblivion. He doggedly clung to the shore, using every bit of sensory input that was not pain to anchor him to awareness, though it was hard to remember why he would wish to remain there. Distantly, he heard the hint of anger roughening Moriarty’s voice, revealing that the criminal mastermind was displeased with his subordinate. Holmes smelled the faint tang of whatever was used to maintain the high gloss of the table that pressed into his cheek. He felt the chill on his back that indicated the removal of the fur - felt a deeper, damper chill telling him that the wound in his shoulder was leaking blood anew.
And he tasted fear along with the linen in his mouth as the sensation of ropes biting into his arm and leg muscles impinged most strongly on his waning consciousness. The sour taste added to the combating currents in his head, alternately pulling him toward the escape of unconsciousness and pushing him to full awareness, in which he might stand a chance of defending himself. Fight, he decided, mentally repeating the word again and again like an incantation for strength and clarity.
“Fight,” he mouthed around the gag when, finally, the only roaring in his ears and mist before his eyes were those of Reichenbach. Options? He assessed as he took more lucid stock of his predicament. Hands? His arms were tightly, if relatively painlessly, bound behind his back, wrists to opposite elbows with further knots squeezing his biceps when he experimentally tensed them. An odd choice, he mused briefly, not inescapable… (with time you may not have…) Feet? Only one leg was bound: his injured one, tied solidly at knee and ankle to one leg of the sturdy wooden table. Inconvenient, he thought deliberately, with an equally deliberate, slow exhalation he wished he could expel, along with the gag, from his mouth. The position of the bonds meant that, unless one of his captors was to foolishly move within easy reach, his one free limb was good for little except standing upon. Enemies?
“A little more to the left.” Moriarty’s voice came, almost as if in response, from close behind Holmes’ chair. “Tipped up just a touch… There.” The words were directed over to the table toward the wall closest to the falls. The half-prone detective could see neither man from his current position - just a foreground of toppled chess pieces (“not the king,” he observed irrelevantly) and a background of stone balustrade. Perhaps…
“Now, Mr. Holmes.” Again the professor seemed to read Holmes’ thoughts. He could not stop the small jerk of surprise at the sudden direct address… or the shiver that followed it, a mixed reaction to the odd mix of anger, mockery, and… something else in Moriarty’s intonation of his name. “As you’ve obliged us with a return to awareness,” the silken serpent’s voice somehow lent the blandest words venomous meanings, “perhaps you would be so good as to further oblige us by getting to your feet.” A citrus twist of ironic humor tinged the last word, stinging Holmes’ wounded pride. The irritation tipped the balance toward being disobliging, as he swiftly weighed the pros and cons of compliance.
“Do you want me to help him to his feet, Professor?” Moran asked, voice cold and gunmetal hard. Holmes’ wounds throbbed in anticipation of further mistreatment.
“I’d like our guest conscious for the rest of our interview, thank you,” Moriarty declined, an acid tang of displeasure joining the irony in his tone. “You may wait inside.” The only answer to that was the shuffle of the colonel’s feet toward the door. “Now, Holmes,” the voice changed tone and drew closer, prompting an irrational desire to violently shrug that intense presence away, “let’s get you upright, shall we?”
Knowing the other man’s hands were coming, and not wanting them, Holmes pushed against the table’s edge with his good shoulder in an effort to lever himself up. The unwanted touch came all the same, a firm grip to the rope looped between his upper arms and another to his hip, pulling him inexorably upward and, after a clatter of the chair being kicked away, against Moriarty’s chest. He could not help the tremor that shuddered minutely down his frame and a muted, breathy chuckle tickled his ear and further vibrated his back in response. Holmes’ eyes darted to the doorway (“five paces away”). Moran stood there, glaring at him with equal parts cold, vindictive satisfaction and heated rage.
“Make sure there are no further interruptions to the plan,” Moriarty dismissed the sharp-shooter. “Or us,” he added, his strangely warm tone and the flexion of the fingers he had not removed from Holmes’ hip causing the detective’s stomach to curdle inexplicably. Die Forelle's sprightly melody echoing grotesquely in his mind and in the pain of his shoulder, the detective's eyes darted from the closed door to whatever it was that Moran had arranged. His startled gaze met Moriarty's smiling one in the glass of the full-length mirror that had formerly stood in the corridor.
"Not what you expected?" Rapidly Holmes assessed their reflections, eyes darting from point ("Professor's frame mostly hidden by my own") to point ("rope one inch in diameter, high quality fiber, excellent weave"), but continually drawn back to the vivid white on black contrast of Moriarty's gloved hand on his left hip. "Distressing, is it not?" His gaze snapped back to meet his captor's narrowed eyes as the professor released his hold on the ropes and slid his right hand slowly along Holmes' shoulder blade and around to the front. There was a sharp intake of breath and another wrench in the bound man's gut when that touch glided over his wound before stopping at his throat. "To not only find yourself outwitted again..." His head threatened to spin again ("fear, anger... mostly fear") at the words, at their half-soothing, half-mocking tone, and at the finger that had slid into his open collar to stroke at the vulnerable hollow of his throat. "But to not have the least idea of the manner of the trap into which you've fallen."
I'm not the only one, he wanted to say -- to drain away his nemesis' smugness. To remind himself that he still had the ultimate upper hand. All that came out, however, was a pathetic nasal whine far too akin to a frightened moan for Holmes to want to continue or repeat it. The sound drew another chuckle from the man behind him: a deceptively soft sound that cut at the strings of his resolution. He lowered his sight to the chessboard and its disarray. He could not escape that sound, or the disquieting heat of the body that half-embraced his own, but he could free his gaze from the reflected image of the glowing triumph in Moriarty's eyes and the view of his hands, the right now stroking a collarbone and the left firmly tracing the line of a hipbone inward, on Holmes' person.
"Did you really think, Holmes," Moriarty asked, voice low and hot against the detective's left ear, "that we would sit here, playing chess, exchanging prosaic banter about move and counter-move?" All the anger, menace, and derision that had soured that cultured voice was gone and it flowed like honey into Holmes' brain. Revolted by it, he flinched away from that sweetness, but the other man merely leaned closer still, wrapping his body more thoroughly around the detective's. "I told you," he continued as he shifted behind his captive until his beard rasped against the opposite ear, wrapping his words around Holmes' mind. "That game..." One white-gloved hand caressed its way down Holmes' front to the chessboard and the black king that stood amidst its fallen men. Holmes weakly clenched bloodless fingers against his elbows in order to suppress another shudder, loathing the friction of his bound arms against Moriarty's chest. "Is over." One solid rap from a finger toppled the king.
No. Holmes' gaze shot up once more to glare his denial into Moriarty's reflected smirk.
"Yes, Holmes. Observe." Moriarty finally removed his left hand from Holmes' hip. However, inexplicably, the detective felt dread rather than relief as he watched the professor remove his gloves and lay them beside the chess table. "Here you are..." His left arm wrapped around Holmes, forearm pressing diagonally across his chest, hand gripping his bad shoulder. "Defeated. Powerless. Outwitted." Each word was drawled out lovingly against his ear, punctuated by a squeeze to his wound that drew muffled cries like admissions. "And here I am." Moriarty lifted and turned his free hand in a small flourish. "About to dominate you."
Before Holmes could register the meaning in that last, husky utterance, a quick pull to the front of his jacket and a push to his free leg toppled him. He fell onto the table, bent over it with chess pieces pressing into his face and chest. Winded by pain and impact, he could only struggle to draw breath as mostly incomprehensible noises sounded behind him. Dominate... ("to rule, to reign, to master") What...?" The word's definition swirled in his mind along with his pain and fear, but its meaning, its intent, eluded him.
"You don't understand what I mean, do you?" Moriarty's voice, soft and pitying, and touch, hot on his captive's waist, returned. "I understood easily enough." Those hands slid between Holmes and the table edge to the closures of his trousers and rapidly, deftly began to undo them. A sharp kick to his wounded ankle quelled his instinctive struggle. "You're not the only one who can observe and deduce."
No! The panicked negation hummed above the sound of the falls, an empty denial not of the situation, but of its acknowledgement. Defeated, echoed back in his brain, powerless. Wildly, Holmes wriggled on the table and kicked out at his captor in a desperate, ineffectual bid for escape.
"Ah, how my little trout resists the net," Moriarty crooned. The anger and shame summoned by those words stilled Holmes' struggles and heated his cheeks. Outwitted. "Truly," the other man continued, hands now tugging at the waistband of trousers and undergarments, "it did not take many observations -- the more than British repression you wear like a great coat, your reaction to my hand holding your arm down -- to see what you hated and feared more than a death you would cheerfully embrace."
Sick fear churned more violently than before in his belly as cold air hit his thighs and buttocks. No... Useless images flashed through his mind in place of thought: grasping hands he'd fought off in fear in school... filthy suggestions he'd fled... Not that... Whatever "that" was it was for lesser mortals. Not me...
Dominated. "Mmm!" A pathetic, high moan escaped him as Moriarty's body moved over his and something hot, hard, large, and slick pressed against his backside. "Nn-nn!!"
"Oh yes, Holmes." Lips were pressed to his ear again. "You are utterly at my mercy. You will be used." He thrashed uselessly against his bonds and the body covering him until he felt the oily slide of that hardness into the cleft of his buttocks and his captor's grip on his hair. "And you will watch every moment of your disgrace." His whisper was huskier than ever as he pulled Holmes' hair, lifting his head off the table and forcing his gaze to the mirror. The detective closed his eyes and shook his head, rejecting the image of his own white, frightened face and Moriarty's flushed one above it. "Or else your doctor friend gains a most intimate familiarity with curare."
Holmes froze. Watson. There was no doubt the madman above him would make good on that promise. An unfamiliar emotion slacked his muscles. It tasted of bile and it constricted his chest and head. Still, without a choice, he kept his head up and he opened his eyes. Moriarty smiled at him in the glass and the acrid taste in his mouth intensified. Slowly, light-headed as shame drew blood away from his brain to heat his cheeks, he nodded.
"Ah..." An indescribable sigh gusted against his ear and his captor released his hair and shifted over him. He watched Moriarty's gaze and grip move to his posterior. Saw the triumph glowing from those steely eyes as his free leg was nudged open and his cheeks were parted. Saw his own revulsion furrowing his brow at the sensation the wet tip of his nemesis' arousal pressing against his opening.
Then, pain. He felt it: a stretching, burning, almost tearing stab... repeated, more intense and further in, as Moriarty clutched his bare hips in a sweaty grip and thrust again, pushing himself deeper into Holmes. He saw it in the deepening furrows of his own grimace, in the twitch of his shoulders as his fingers dug into his arms again, and in the glitter of moisture gathering in the corners of his eyes. He heard it in the muffled shrieks that sounded around the gag. He saw and heard the enjoyment of it slitting of Moriarty's eyes and in soft, humming grunts the man made in response to his cries.
Overwhelmed by pain and shame as he felt the fiery torture of the invading member being withdrawn -- as he saw the ecstatic triumph stretching his greatest enemy's face as the man thrust back in, violating him deeper than before -- Holmes' face dropped back down to the table, eyes closing against tears of agony. Above him, he heard a slight groan and the panting of Moriarty's breath. His stomach heaved at the sound, already aggravated by fear and disgust, and acid burned the back of his throat. The hands on his hips, but not their sweaty imprint, were removed, but only to again grasp the ropes on his arms and his good shoulder. He felt the bite of his bonds as he was pulled upright once more. And his cry of pain was joined by Moriarty's low moan of pleasure, now close against his ear, as the change in position clenched Holmes' muscles around the other man's shaft.
"Open your eyes," Moriarty breathed into his ear, beard scratching shame-heated flesh. "Open them," he repeated as his hands swiftly pulled open the buttons of Holmes' shirt, "or I give the signal to Moran."
Watson, Holmes remembered. He tried to hold an image of his brother-in-arms struggling through his own pain and exhaustion to fight their common battle, as he forced his unwilling eyes to open. That illusion, however, crumbled under the blow of reality and morphed into an image of the doctor's horrified face should he behold Holmes' degradation.
"Look." Pushing away thoughts of Watson except as a vague goad, he complied. He met Moriarty's satisfied gaze in the mirror and followed it when it moved, tracing down the straining column of his throat to where the professor's hands lay splayed, casually possessive, on Holmes' bared chest and abdomen, and lower still to where his flaccid manhood was trapped against the edge of the table. Beyond that, the angle of the mirror allowed him to see one of Moriarty's hips and watch it undulate as the man started, slowly and slightly, to thrust into him again.
"Look, Holmes," his captor crooned against his ear. His gaze snapped back up, repelled first by dominating, animal motion, then by the malevolent pleasure twisting Moriarty's features. Instead, his eyes moved to his own reflected face and watched it flush impossibly redder in horror and humiliation as the corners of his moist eyes creased with the effort of keeping them open. "Ahhh..." The professor breathed a heated sigh against Holmes' cheek and his member throbbed, expanded fractionally within the detective. The disgusting sound and sensation were repeated in response to the pitiful moan Holmes' brittle pride could not hold back.
"Do you understand now?" Moriarty whispered as the molten steel of his gaze compelled Holmes to meet it. "The price you pay for inadequacy? The punishment you earn for your arrogance?" He underscored his quiet words with short, hard pistons of his hips. "How completely I have..." his arms wrapped tighter around Holmes, hands trailing sweat, "...mastered you." His tongue, not finished with its honey-venom assault, darted out to stroke up the shell of his captive's ear.
The words, the sight, the touch, the invasion... They laid mental and physical siege to Holmes' core, shredding his pride and confidence, striking at his foundations. He shuddered in Moriarty's raptorial hold, longing to close his eyes and ears -- wishing he'd not resisted the previous pull to unconsciousness. His tremor pressed his bound arms against his captor, grinding them over something more solid than flesh or fabric. The notebook... When his pain and shame-fogged mind identified the object and grasped its meaning, it tried to latch onto it, use it as a barrier. Not defeated, he reminded himself.
But the red of the notebook became the red of his flushed, contorted face, or the blood staining his shirt, or of Moriarty's tongue on his flesh. And the unspoken words were drowned by his own muffled, uncontrolled cries and the unending poison of the professor's quiet voice.
"Mm, Holmes," Moriarty purred after a sharp pinch to one of the detective's nipples caused an unwilled clench of his muscles. "I think we've found your true purpose. So much quicker." He repeated the action on the other side. "So much more responsive." And again, assaulting both. "Than in our duel... So good." The last words were released in a groan as a motion on Holmes' part -- a desperate, involuntary, futile struggle against his tormentor -- drove the professor deeper inside. Moriarty nipped at an earlobe, then mouthed it as he murmured, "Made for this..." He added three more words in German, but his tone was so harsh and breathy, it took Holmes a moment to process them.
My little trout.
Moriarty's heated gaze and small, contented smile... His own reddened, marked body and the sharp motions of the other behind it, around it, dominating it... The entire scene of his debasement wavered and swam in his sight, but Holmes could still make out the glints of light reflecting off his tears.
And so could Moriarty. With an animalistic sound blended of an impassioned growl and a satisfied sigh, the professor pushed Holmes down onto the table again, scattering chess pieces. More fell to the stone floor as Moriarty thrust harder and faster into his captive's body, grunting in counterpoint to their clatter and Holmes' stifled shrieks. Winded, drowning in agony, psyche in tatters, Holmes could do nothing except close his eyes and call back the oblivion he'd resisted earlier.
What came instead was a vile explosion of hot fluid deep inside and Moriarty's teeth on his neck as the madman stifled an ecstatic cry in Holmes' flesh.
The tears stopped. The tension drained from his limbs. For a long, empty moment, as Moriarty lay over him, shaking Holmes with the ragged panting of his breath, he felt nothing. He barely felt the other man's wet, stinging withdrawal. He distantly heard the rustle of the professor tidying himself. The removal of his bonds only registered more strongly because of the influx of cold, clean air into his mouth and the pins and needles of returning sensation.
The welcome void of thought and feeling was not allowed to last, though. "Allow me to help you up, Holmes." That voice and gloved touch were once again deceptively cool. Somehow, that sickened Holmes more -- made the previous few minutes more vivid, more degrading. Coughing on bile, he tried to slap away those helping hands. "Very well," Moriarty conceded, a soupçon of laughter in his cultured tone, "but I do suggest you... tidy yourself before Moran escorts the doctor here."
Watson! Fear for his friend momentarily pushing everything else from his mind, Holmes rapidly levered himself off the table. He was forced to catch himself on the table, though, as pain shot up his lower back and his right leg buckled.
"Not to worry." The detective glared at the reflection of his enemy's smiling face. "He's merely coming to tend to you. That shoulder really needs looking at." He rapidly shifted his gaze from that disturbingly warm smile to the bloody spot on his shirt. His eyes, however, were caught by a different red mark: the imprint of Moriarty's teeth on his neck. They jumped from there to the redness of his abused nipples, the tear tracks on his face, the white fluid trickling from between his exposed thighs...
No! Biting his lips against one more cry, Holmes pushed himself away from the table and staggered away from the hateful image in the glass. He caught himself on the balustrade and clung to it, taking deep cleansing breaths of crisp mountain air. Feeling the loathsome weight of his adversary's stare the whole time, he feverishly, clumsily pulled up his undergarments and trousers, grimacing at the feel of... dampness inside them. He pulled off his gloves in order to close what buttons remained on his shirt and jacket before forcing his gaze to again meet, directly this time, Moriarty's.
"Our business is settled," the professor answered the unspoken question the detective had been unable to keep out of his eyes. One gloved hand reached into a pocket to pull out a pencil. "You and the doctor will be quite free to go," he added, pulling out another object as he began turning away.
The red notebook. Holmes' one redemption at that moment. "But you won't be, professor." His voice was far too weak, but it served.
"I beg your pardon?" He drew power from the slight breaking of that cool facade. "I won't be what?"
"Free to go, I'm afraid." He wanted to say more -- wanted to glibly taunt his nemesis in his accustomed way -- but he simply lacked the energy. Instead, he just looked at the notebook and smiled. He felt a ghost of genuine humor curve his lips further as he watched Moriarty flip through the pages of the notebook.
"How...?" The notebook dropped onto cold, damp stone. "You...?"
"I'm afraid so, professor." Holmes got all the vindication he could from the professor's twitching eyes. Moriarty got all the answer he needed from the muted triumph the detective poured into his gaze. Those steel eyes stopped twitching and narrowed, honed by homicidal rage. The furious man made two jerky steps toward him before--
"Holmes!" Watson called out as he burst out onto the balcony. Moriarty smiled at Holmes then, a humorless, venomous baring of teeth, and turned his knife-like glare on the doctor. His hand reached for whatever weapon he had secreted on his person ("small, discreet, in breast pocket -- likely a blowpipe") as his body followed his gaze.
Holmes didn't weigh options. He lunged forward and wrapped his arms around his enemy. Before the enraged man could react properly, the detective closed his eyes against Watson's startled expression and pulled .
I'm sorry, my friend, he thought briefly. Then he surrendered himself to the exhilaration of the fall and the cold cleansing waters below.
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Deleted scenes:
Unfortunately, trying to keep this as [relatively] realistic as possible and as in tune as possible with the flow of the movie (let's assume Moriarty & Moran are really efficient at tying people up and that Holmes wasn't out too long), certain scenes did not make the final cut:
1 - Moriarty strips Holmes naked.
2 - Moriarty takes some time to force some response from Holmes... because any "enjoyment" would humiliate Holmes more.
3 - Moriarty uses that black king chess piece (and some gun oil/grease from Moran) in creative "foreplay." (I don't even like object insertion, but it would have fit the story, I think... if only they'd had more time).
Anyway... Moriarty/Holmes is really getting me back into the swing of things. I want to fill a few more prompts. Like this one, and this one, and this one (yeah, I know it's my prompt, but the image won't go away)... ... ...and this one.
Then I think I can get back to some other things.
Characters/Pairing: Moriarty/Holmes
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Spoilers for A Game of Shadows. Rape, bondage, other violence.
Word Count: ~4300
Disclaimer: Not my characters. Not for profit.
Summary: Did Holmes really think Moriarty would do anything as prosaic as sit, play chess, and chat? Written for a kinkmeme prompt for Moriarty raping Holmes, but with very specific kinks.
Author's Notes: OK. I've only seen the new movie once so far and will be unable to see it again until after March 10th (sometimes I hate you, Japan!). I've watched and rewatched some clips with Moriarty in them, and he stayed with me (god, I somehow cannot stop looking at the picture that is the basis for my icon), but I'm still not 100% confident with my Harris!Moriarty. ... But I just can't wait until March to write my Moriarty/Holmes...
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"Here we are. Don't want you to catch cold." Holmes felt a shiver dance lightly through his limbs at the words. The indefinite threat looming behind their mild delivery lent them a wealth of meanings, none of them pleasant, that the individual words could never contain. A sharp chill shot down his spine in contrary response to the fur now draped over his shoulders. The icy menace of Moriarty’s form seemed to seep through the dark pelt from the professor’s hands, freezing Holmes more than the misty Alpine air. That cold (“fear,” his ruthlessly honest, analytical mind defined in spite of his pride’s denial) seemed to ice his vocal chords, preventing the witty response he likely should have been making.
Move away, he willed the insane genius behind him as the grip on his shoulders continued too long, too… predatory. The almost possessive curl of Moriarty’s fingers was disquieting, not to mention painful on his injured shoulder. The pain. He focused on that well-accustomed sensation, infinitely preferable to the others that were rising in him as the other man leaned over him, body oppressively close, beard brushing unpleasantly against his hair, breath far too intimately steaming his ear. Partially immobilized by fur and adversary, Holmes reached out to the chessboard with his good hand and drew a steadying breath in preparation for a pointed reminder of their business.
“The game’s already over,” Moriarty answered his unspoken words softly, breathing them against the back of Holmes’ ear, “Holmes.” Unexpected, overwhelming pain racked the detective then as, in time with the whispered caress of his name, Moriarty’s fingers dug strongly into his wounded shoulder in vicious counterpoint. Instinctively, Holmes’ mouth opened further to free the startled cry of agony that was growing inside him.
“Armph!” The shout was stifled almost immediately as the hand he could have sworn was still on his good shoulder pushed a compact wad of cloth into his mouth (“linen, clean, likely a handkerchief,” his senses observed, independent of his will). Still reeling, dizzy with the pain on which he’d focused, Holmes could not fight off the hands that tied something ("narrow silk, hint of cologne: tie") over his mouth or the arm that pressed him down hard into the table. Too many hands, he thought dimly, before his nemesis’ voice clarified the inconsistency.
“The rope, Moran.” A clear, logical corner of the detective’s brain duly noted that the number of his captors had doubled. A corner that was anything but reacted viscerally to the actual meaning of the words, sending panicked impulses to mouth and limbs. A sound that would have been “no” had him mouth been free hummed senselessly around the gag as his feet pushed against stone floor and his arms fought their current entrapment.
His struggles were savagely yet efficiently halted by simultaneous, sharp jabs to both the wound in his shoulder and the one in his ankle. Incapacitating waves of pain radiated out from those two centers, dragging his consciousness toward the sea of oblivion. He doggedly clung to the shore, using every bit of sensory input that was not pain to anchor him to awareness, though it was hard to remember why he would wish to remain there. Distantly, he heard the hint of anger roughening Moriarty’s voice, revealing that the criminal mastermind was displeased with his subordinate. Holmes smelled the faint tang of whatever was used to maintain the high gloss of the table that pressed into his cheek. He felt the chill on his back that indicated the removal of the fur - felt a deeper, damper chill telling him that the wound in his shoulder was leaking blood anew.
And he tasted fear along with the linen in his mouth as the sensation of ropes biting into his arm and leg muscles impinged most strongly on his waning consciousness. The sour taste added to the combating currents in his head, alternately pulling him toward the escape of unconsciousness and pushing him to full awareness, in which he might stand a chance of defending himself. Fight, he decided, mentally repeating the word again and again like an incantation for strength and clarity.
“Fight,” he mouthed around the gag when, finally, the only roaring in his ears and mist before his eyes were those of Reichenbach. Options? He assessed as he took more lucid stock of his predicament. Hands? His arms were tightly, if relatively painlessly, bound behind his back, wrists to opposite elbows with further knots squeezing his biceps when he experimentally tensed them. An odd choice, he mused briefly, not inescapable… (with time you may not have…) Feet? Only one leg was bound: his injured one, tied solidly at knee and ankle to one leg of the sturdy wooden table. Inconvenient, he thought deliberately, with an equally deliberate, slow exhalation he wished he could expel, along with the gag, from his mouth. The position of the bonds meant that, unless one of his captors was to foolishly move within easy reach, his one free limb was good for little except standing upon. Enemies?
“A little more to the left.” Moriarty’s voice came, almost as if in response, from close behind Holmes’ chair. “Tipped up just a touch… There.” The words were directed over to the table toward the wall closest to the falls. The half-prone detective could see neither man from his current position - just a foreground of toppled chess pieces (“not the king,” he observed irrelevantly) and a background of stone balustrade. Perhaps…
“Now, Mr. Holmes.” Again the professor seemed to read Holmes’ thoughts. He could not stop the small jerk of surprise at the sudden direct address… or the shiver that followed it, a mixed reaction to the odd mix of anger, mockery, and… something else in Moriarty’s intonation of his name. “As you’ve obliged us with a return to awareness,” the silken serpent’s voice somehow lent the blandest words venomous meanings, “perhaps you would be so good as to further oblige us by getting to your feet.” A citrus twist of ironic humor tinged the last word, stinging Holmes’ wounded pride. The irritation tipped the balance toward being disobliging, as he swiftly weighed the pros and cons of compliance.
“Do you want me to help him to his feet, Professor?” Moran asked, voice cold and gunmetal hard. Holmes’ wounds throbbed in anticipation of further mistreatment.
“I’d like our guest conscious for the rest of our interview, thank you,” Moriarty declined, an acid tang of displeasure joining the irony in his tone. “You may wait inside.” The only answer to that was the shuffle of the colonel’s feet toward the door. “Now, Holmes,” the voice changed tone and drew closer, prompting an irrational desire to violently shrug that intense presence away, “let’s get you upright, shall we?”
Knowing the other man’s hands were coming, and not wanting them, Holmes pushed against the table’s edge with his good shoulder in an effort to lever himself up. The unwanted touch came all the same, a firm grip to the rope looped between his upper arms and another to his hip, pulling him inexorably upward and, after a clatter of the chair being kicked away, against Moriarty’s chest. He could not help the tremor that shuddered minutely down his frame and a muted, breathy chuckle tickled his ear and further vibrated his back in response. Holmes’ eyes darted to the doorway (“five paces away”). Moran stood there, glaring at him with equal parts cold, vindictive satisfaction and heated rage.
“Make sure there are no further interruptions to the plan,” Moriarty dismissed the sharp-shooter. “Or us,” he added, his strangely warm tone and the flexion of the fingers he had not removed from Holmes’ hip causing the detective’s stomach to curdle inexplicably. Die Forelle's sprightly melody echoing grotesquely in his mind and in the pain of his shoulder, the detective's eyes darted from the closed door to whatever it was that Moran had arranged. His startled gaze met Moriarty's smiling one in the glass of the full-length mirror that had formerly stood in the corridor.
"Not what you expected?" Rapidly Holmes assessed their reflections, eyes darting from point ("Professor's frame mostly hidden by my own") to point ("rope one inch in diameter, high quality fiber, excellent weave"), but continually drawn back to the vivid white on black contrast of Moriarty's gloved hand on his left hip. "Distressing, is it not?" His gaze snapped back to meet his captor's narrowed eyes as the professor released his hold on the ropes and slid his right hand slowly along Holmes' shoulder blade and around to the front. There was a sharp intake of breath and another wrench in the bound man's gut when that touch glided over his wound before stopping at his throat. "To not only find yourself outwitted again..." His head threatened to spin again ("fear, anger... mostly fear") at the words, at their half-soothing, half-mocking tone, and at the finger that had slid into his open collar to stroke at the vulnerable hollow of his throat. "But to not have the least idea of the manner of the trap into which you've fallen."
I'm not the only one, he wanted to say -- to drain away his nemesis' smugness. To remind himself that he still had the ultimate upper hand. All that came out, however, was a pathetic nasal whine far too akin to a frightened moan for Holmes to want to continue or repeat it. The sound drew another chuckle from the man behind him: a deceptively soft sound that cut at the strings of his resolution. He lowered his sight to the chessboard and its disarray. He could not escape that sound, or the disquieting heat of the body that half-embraced his own, but he could free his gaze from the reflected image of the glowing triumph in Moriarty's eyes and the view of his hands, the right now stroking a collarbone and the left firmly tracing the line of a hipbone inward, on Holmes' person.
"Did you really think, Holmes," Moriarty asked, voice low and hot against the detective's left ear, "that we would sit here, playing chess, exchanging prosaic banter about move and counter-move?" All the anger, menace, and derision that had soured that cultured voice was gone and it flowed like honey into Holmes' brain. Revolted by it, he flinched away from that sweetness, but the other man merely leaned closer still, wrapping his body more thoroughly around the detective's. "I told you," he continued as he shifted behind his captive until his beard rasped against the opposite ear, wrapping his words around Holmes' mind. "That game..." One white-gloved hand caressed its way down Holmes' front to the chessboard and the black king that stood amidst its fallen men. Holmes weakly clenched bloodless fingers against his elbows in order to suppress another shudder, loathing the friction of his bound arms against Moriarty's chest. "Is over." One solid rap from a finger toppled the king.
No. Holmes' gaze shot up once more to glare his denial into Moriarty's reflected smirk.
"Yes, Holmes. Observe." Moriarty finally removed his left hand from Holmes' hip. However, inexplicably, the detective felt dread rather than relief as he watched the professor remove his gloves and lay them beside the chess table. "Here you are..." His left arm wrapped around Holmes, forearm pressing diagonally across his chest, hand gripping his bad shoulder. "Defeated. Powerless. Outwitted." Each word was drawled out lovingly against his ear, punctuated by a squeeze to his wound that drew muffled cries like admissions. "And here I am." Moriarty lifted and turned his free hand in a small flourish. "About to dominate you."
Before Holmes could register the meaning in that last, husky utterance, a quick pull to the front of his jacket and a push to his free leg toppled him. He fell onto the table, bent over it with chess pieces pressing into his face and chest. Winded by pain and impact, he could only struggle to draw breath as mostly incomprehensible noises sounded behind him. Dominate... ("to rule, to reign, to master") What...?" The word's definition swirled in his mind along with his pain and fear, but its meaning, its intent, eluded him.
"You don't understand what I mean, do you?" Moriarty's voice, soft and pitying, and touch, hot on his captive's waist, returned. "I understood easily enough." Those hands slid between Holmes and the table edge to the closures of his trousers and rapidly, deftly began to undo them. A sharp kick to his wounded ankle quelled his instinctive struggle. "You're not the only one who can observe and deduce."
No! The panicked negation hummed above the sound of the falls, an empty denial not of the situation, but of its acknowledgement. Defeated, echoed back in his brain, powerless. Wildly, Holmes wriggled on the table and kicked out at his captor in a desperate, ineffectual bid for escape.
"Ah, how my little trout resists the net," Moriarty crooned. The anger and shame summoned by those words stilled Holmes' struggles and heated his cheeks. Outwitted. "Truly," the other man continued, hands now tugging at the waistband of trousers and undergarments, "it did not take many observations -- the more than British repression you wear like a great coat, your reaction to my hand holding your arm down -- to see what you hated and feared more than a death you would cheerfully embrace."
Sick fear churned more violently than before in his belly as cold air hit his thighs and buttocks. No... Useless images flashed through his mind in place of thought: grasping hands he'd fought off in fear in school... filthy suggestions he'd fled... Not that... Whatever "that" was it was for lesser mortals. Not me...
Dominated. "Mmm!" A pathetic, high moan escaped him as Moriarty's body moved over his and something hot, hard, large, and slick pressed against his backside. "Nn-nn!!"
"Oh yes, Holmes." Lips were pressed to his ear again. "You are utterly at my mercy. You will be used." He thrashed uselessly against his bonds and the body covering him until he felt the oily slide of that hardness into the cleft of his buttocks and his captor's grip on his hair. "And you will watch every moment of your disgrace." His whisper was huskier than ever as he pulled Holmes' hair, lifting his head off the table and forcing his gaze to the mirror. The detective closed his eyes and shook his head, rejecting the image of his own white, frightened face and Moriarty's flushed one above it. "Or else your doctor friend gains a most intimate familiarity with curare."
Holmes froze. Watson. There was no doubt the madman above him would make good on that promise. An unfamiliar emotion slacked his muscles. It tasted of bile and it constricted his chest and head. Still, without a choice, he kept his head up and he opened his eyes. Moriarty smiled at him in the glass and the acrid taste in his mouth intensified. Slowly, light-headed as shame drew blood away from his brain to heat his cheeks, he nodded.
"Ah..." An indescribable sigh gusted against his ear and his captor released his hair and shifted over him. He watched Moriarty's gaze and grip move to his posterior. Saw the triumph glowing from those steely eyes as his free leg was nudged open and his cheeks were parted. Saw his own revulsion furrowing his brow at the sensation the wet tip of his nemesis' arousal pressing against his opening.
Then, pain. He felt it: a stretching, burning, almost tearing stab... repeated, more intense and further in, as Moriarty clutched his bare hips in a sweaty grip and thrust again, pushing himself deeper into Holmes. He saw it in the deepening furrows of his own grimace, in the twitch of his shoulders as his fingers dug into his arms again, and in the glitter of moisture gathering in the corners of his eyes. He heard it in the muffled shrieks that sounded around the gag. He saw and heard the enjoyment of it slitting of Moriarty's eyes and in soft, humming grunts the man made in response to his cries.
Overwhelmed by pain and shame as he felt the fiery torture of the invading member being withdrawn -- as he saw the ecstatic triumph stretching his greatest enemy's face as the man thrust back in, violating him deeper than before -- Holmes' face dropped back down to the table, eyes closing against tears of agony. Above him, he heard a slight groan and the panting of Moriarty's breath. His stomach heaved at the sound, already aggravated by fear and disgust, and acid burned the back of his throat. The hands on his hips, but not their sweaty imprint, were removed, but only to again grasp the ropes on his arms and his good shoulder. He felt the bite of his bonds as he was pulled upright once more. And his cry of pain was joined by Moriarty's low moan of pleasure, now close against his ear, as the change in position clenched Holmes' muscles around the other man's shaft.
"Open your eyes," Moriarty breathed into his ear, beard scratching shame-heated flesh. "Open them," he repeated as his hands swiftly pulled open the buttons of Holmes' shirt, "or I give the signal to Moran."
Watson, Holmes remembered. He tried to hold an image of his brother-in-arms struggling through his own pain and exhaustion to fight their common battle, as he forced his unwilling eyes to open. That illusion, however, crumbled under the blow of reality and morphed into an image of the doctor's horrified face should he behold Holmes' degradation.
"Look." Pushing away thoughts of Watson except as a vague goad, he complied. He met Moriarty's satisfied gaze in the mirror and followed it when it moved, tracing down the straining column of his throat to where the professor's hands lay splayed, casually possessive, on Holmes' bared chest and abdomen, and lower still to where his flaccid manhood was trapped against the edge of the table. Beyond that, the angle of the mirror allowed him to see one of Moriarty's hips and watch it undulate as the man started, slowly and slightly, to thrust into him again.
"Look, Holmes," his captor crooned against his ear. His gaze snapped back up, repelled first by dominating, animal motion, then by the malevolent pleasure twisting Moriarty's features. Instead, his eyes moved to his own reflected face and watched it flush impossibly redder in horror and humiliation as the corners of his moist eyes creased with the effort of keeping them open. "Ahhh..." The professor breathed a heated sigh against Holmes' cheek and his member throbbed, expanded fractionally within the detective. The disgusting sound and sensation were repeated in response to the pitiful moan Holmes' brittle pride could not hold back.
"Do you understand now?" Moriarty whispered as the molten steel of his gaze compelled Holmes to meet it. "The price you pay for inadequacy? The punishment you earn for your arrogance?" He underscored his quiet words with short, hard pistons of his hips. "How completely I have..." his arms wrapped tighter around Holmes, hands trailing sweat, "...mastered you." His tongue, not finished with its honey-venom assault, darted out to stroke up the shell of his captive's ear.
The words, the sight, the touch, the invasion... They laid mental and physical siege to Holmes' core, shredding his pride and confidence, striking at his foundations. He shuddered in Moriarty's raptorial hold, longing to close his eyes and ears -- wishing he'd not resisted the previous pull to unconsciousness. His tremor pressed his bound arms against his captor, grinding them over something more solid than flesh or fabric. The notebook... When his pain and shame-fogged mind identified the object and grasped its meaning, it tried to latch onto it, use it as a barrier. Not defeated, he reminded himself.
But the red of the notebook became the red of his flushed, contorted face, or the blood staining his shirt, or of Moriarty's tongue on his flesh. And the unspoken words were drowned by his own muffled, uncontrolled cries and the unending poison of the professor's quiet voice.
"Mm, Holmes," Moriarty purred after a sharp pinch to one of the detective's nipples caused an unwilled clench of his muscles. "I think we've found your true purpose. So much quicker." He repeated the action on the other side. "So much more responsive." And again, assaulting both. "Than in our duel... So good." The last words were released in a groan as a motion on Holmes' part -- a desperate, involuntary, futile struggle against his tormentor -- drove the professor deeper inside. Moriarty nipped at an earlobe, then mouthed it as he murmured, "Made for this..." He added three more words in German, but his tone was so harsh and breathy, it took Holmes a moment to process them.
My little trout.
Moriarty's heated gaze and small, contented smile... His own reddened, marked body and the sharp motions of the other behind it, around it, dominating it... The entire scene of his debasement wavered and swam in his sight, but Holmes could still make out the glints of light reflecting off his tears.
And so could Moriarty. With an animalistic sound blended of an impassioned growl and a satisfied sigh, the professor pushed Holmes down onto the table again, scattering chess pieces. More fell to the stone floor as Moriarty thrust harder and faster into his captive's body, grunting in counterpoint to their clatter and Holmes' stifled shrieks. Winded, drowning in agony, psyche in tatters, Holmes could do nothing except close his eyes and call back the oblivion he'd resisted earlier.
What came instead was a vile explosion of hot fluid deep inside and Moriarty's teeth on his neck as the madman stifled an ecstatic cry in Holmes' flesh.
The tears stopped. The tension drained from his limbs. For a long, empty moment, as Moriarty lay over him, shaking Holmes with the ragged panting of his breath, he felt nothing. He barely felt the other man's wet, stinging withdrawal. He distantly heard the rustle of the professor tidying himself. The removal of his bonds only registered more strongly because of the influx of cold, clean air into his mouth and the pins and needles of returning sensation.
The welcome void of thought and feeling was not allowed to last, though. "Allow me to help you up, Holmes." That voice and gloved touch were once again deceptively cool. Somehow, that sickened Holmes more -- made the previous few minutes more vivid, more degrading. Coughing on bile, he tried to slap away those helping hands. "Very well," Moriarty conceded, a soupçon of laughter in his cultured tone, "but I do suggest you... tidy yourself before Moran escorts the doctor here."
Watson! Fear for his friend momentarily pushing everything else from his mind, Holmes rapidly levered himself off the table. He was forced to catch himself on the table, though, as pain shot up his lower back and his right leg buckled.
"Not to worry." The detective glared at the reflection of his enemy's smiling face. "He's merely coming to tend to you. That shoulder really needs looking at." He rapidly shifted his gaze from that disturbingly warm smile to the bloody spot on his shirt. His eyes, however, were caught by a different red mark: the imprint of Moriarty's teeth on his neck. They jumped from there to the redness of his abused nipples, the tear tracks on his face, the white fluid trickling from between his exposed thighs...
No! Biting his lips against one more cry, Holmes pushed himself away from the table and staggered away from the hateful image in the glass. He caught himself on the balustrade and clung to it, taking deep cleansing breaths of crisp mountain air. Feeling the loathsome weight of his adversary's stare the whole time, he feverishly, clumsily pulled up his undergarments and trousers, grimacing at the feel of... dampness inside them. He pulled off his gloves in order to close what buttons remained on his shirt and jacket before forcing his gaze to again meet, directly this time, Moriarty's.
"Our business is settled," the professor answered the unspoken question the detective had been unable to keep out of his eyes. One gloved hand reached into a pocket to pull out a pencil. "You and the doctor will be quite free to go," he added, pulling out another object as he began turning away.
The red notebook. Holmes' one redemption at that moment. "But you won't be, professor." His voice was far too weak, but it served.
"I beg your pardon?" He drew power from the slight breaking of that cool facade. "I won't be what?"
"Free to go, I'm afraid." He wanted to say more -- wanted to glibly taunt his nemesis in his accustomed way -- but he simply lacked the energy. Instead, he just looked at the notebook and smiled. He felt a ghost of genuine humor curve his lips further as he watched Moriarty flip through the pages of the notebook.
"How...?" The notebook dropped onto cold, damp stone. "You...?"
"I'm afraid so, professor." Holmes got all the vindication he could from the professor's twitching eyes. Moriarty got all the answer he needed from the muted triumph the detective poured into his gaze. Those steel eyes stopped twitching and narrowed, honed by homicidal rage. The furious man made two jerky steps toward him before--
"Holmes!" Watson called out as he burst out onto the balcony. Moriarty smiled at Holmes then, a humorless, venomous baring of teeth, and turned his knife-like glare on the doctor. His hand reached for whatever weapon he had secreted on his person ("small, discreet, in breast pocket -- likely a blowpipe") as his body followed his gaze.
Holmes didn't weigh options. He lunged forward and wrapped his arms around his enemy. Before the enraged man could react properly, the detective closed his eyes against Watson's startled expression and pulled .
I'm sorry, my friend, he thought briefly. Then he surrendered himself to the exhilaration of the fall and the cold cleansing waters below.
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Deleted scenes:
Unfortunately, trying to keep this as [relatively] realistic as possible and as in tune as possible with the flow of the movie (let's assume Moriarty & Moran are really efficient at tying people up and that Holmes wasn't out too long), certain scenes did not make the final cut:
1 - Moriarty strips Holmes naked.
2 - Moriarty takes some time to force some response from Holmes... because any "enjoyment" would humiliate Holmes more.
3 - Moriarty uses that black king chess piece (and some gun oil/grease from Moran) in creative "foreplay." (I don't even like object insertion, but it would have fit the story, I think... if only they'd had more time).
Anyway... Moriarty/Holmes is really getting me back into the swing of things. I want to fill a few more prompts. Like this one, and this one, and this one (yeah, I know it's my prompt, but the image won't go away)... ... ...and this one.
Then I think I can get back to some other things.