Notes:
Warnings, kinks & contents: forced (blackmailed into) kissing, biting, and watching - i.e. noncon warning for that. Hostage situation. Sherlock/Moriarty, Sherlock/Lestrade.
Set at some nebulous point in time during season two. Thanks go to evitably for betaing. :)
This was written for the sherlockbbc Commfest Semi-Exchange and posted anonymously. My giftee asked for a hostage situation at Scotland Yard.
This story has also been posted to Archive of Our Own.
Play With Me
Sherlock is no hero. If he were, he couldn't do what needs doing. Heroes don't work that way.
A hostage situation usually involves the hostages knowing that they're hostages. That is not the case here: The only people knowing that Scotland Yard has just been turned into so many walking corpses are Sherlock and Moriarty.
Scotland Yard believe Sherlock is the hostage. It's funny. Sherlock knows it is because Moriarty can't stop laughing.
"Play a little with me," he says, turning off the camera. The small window in the lower left corner of the laptop goes dark and in the main window Sherlock can see Lestrade pressing his lips together.
Sherlock closes his eyes, breathes out harshly through his nose. But it's too late, he knows. He's given too much away.
Sherlock misses Moriarty moving behind him, starts when he hears his voice from another direction. "Now, now. Nothing of that, dear." A hand grabs his hair, jerks his head back roughly. Sherlock's mouth is taped shut, and his arms and legs are bound to the chair he is sitting on, so when. Moriarty smiles at him like a shark and presses his lips onto the tape in a kiss, Sherlock is entirely incapable of punching him or even kicking him like he wants to. And even though there is no tongue involved - cannot be - nothing about this kiss is what one might consider chaste. "So unresponsive. Oh, but of course. Silly me."
He rips the tape off, and although Sherlock was braced for pain, it still stings.
"Now, I know you have a thing for him," he draws out the 'o' in 'know'. It's irritating. "And frankly, I wouldn't have guessed you were the type to go after older gentlemen, especially someone so normal. But." He pauses, and Sherlock tries to keep a blank face. Tries not to think about Lestrade - he will only ever be Lestrade to Sherlock; it's like the last name has become the man; 'Greg' just feels so wrong - but his mind brings up memories anyway, a whole flood of them, as if he'd suddenly lost control over all his neatly stacked files, images flashing past like pieces of paper blown by a sudden gust of wind.
It's a mess.
Sherlock is a mess. He remembers the hand on his shoulder the first night he's ever met Lestrade, remembers how the touch had turned from comforting to comforting-and-electrifying over the months. Remembers being pressed up against the door of a cheap motel - Sherlock would have been fine with the alley, but Lestrade insisted, so they'd rented a room for an hour - remembers pushing forward with lips and hands and body before sinking to his knees. Remembers how afterwards he was held, pressed tight against Lestrade's body, and how good and how safe he felt. Safe for the first time in years and the kind of safety that Sherlock actually craves, not that false sense of security when, for a couple of days, no one is trying to strangle him to death with his own scarf or dares him into swallowing a potential lethal pill because Sherlock likes the excitement of that.
"Sweet," Moriarty murmurs against his ear as if he could look inside Sherlock's brain and see everything there is to see, every remembered touch of Lestrade's hands - mocking him for it. "Now, let me give you some relationship advice. I believe you haven't had many of those, so you need it, trust me. The best way to keep their interest? Is to make them jealous."
Sherlock plays along - because there's a bomb at Scotland Yard and none of them know and he doesn't care about Donovan or all the other idiots running this way and that and crossing the camera in the laptop every once in a while and stealing a glance. He cares about Lestrade, however, much more than he should and he made the mistake of showing it.
And Lestrade cares back and that's why he's staying inside the office, stays near their only means of communication with Moriarty, stays near the only thing offering proof that Sherlock is alive. Stays, in other words, right by the explosive laptop.
Sherlock wishes neither of them cared at all.
The chair is angled to the side, webcam still set next to Moriarty's own laptop. The little screen in the corner goes live again and Sherlock can see himself from the corner of his eye, can see his tousled hair.
For once in all the time Sherlock has known him, Moriarty doesn't say anything. Sherlock thinks this is almost worse than constant inane chatter; the silence has a determined quality to it.
Lestrade notices almost immediately that the camera is back on since he lingered in front of the laptop, throwing glances at it every few seconds, brows creased, pinching the bridge of his nose in frustration and concern like he often does when working on a case that gets to him. Behind Lestrade stands John. He's staring directly at the screen, at Sherlock. For a wild moment Sherlock considers blinking 'get out' in Morse at him, but Moriarty's attention is focused on Sherlock. He's too smart not to notice.
Sherlock has never, ever before wished that a criminal were stupid - stupid criminals were boring - but he does now.
"Looked your fill, sweeties?" Moriarty asks. "Now watch this." He steps forward, spreads his legs to either side of the chair, hands on Sherlock's arms, and sinks down slowly in a move reminiscent of a stripper performing a lapdance, only with actual bodily contact as he sits on Sherlock's legs.
Sherlock arranges his face into an expression of mild interest - no, no - mild arousal. Licking his lips, letting his eyes fall halfway shut.
He needs to be convincing; that's part of the rules of this game, Moriarty said.
Moriarty rocks his hips forward, strokes Sherlock's arms - covered by his coat, but still - and licks a trail up Sherlock's neck.
Sherlock moans.
He doesn't dare look at the screen now, is glad that there's no voice feed - not from Scotland Yard to this room in any case. Doesn't want to hear the sharp intake of breath or the shocked silence or the stupid comments from some of the more idiotic members of the department.
Moriarty bites down on his neck, harder, harder, not quite hard enough to draw blood but close, Sherlock thinks even as his breath freezes inside his lungs. He's not into pain; he's not, but he knows what's expected of him. "Harder," he rasps out, and Moriarty chuckles against his skin. "Later." He moves his mouth to Sherlock's ear. "Keep your mind on me," he whispers.
Or else I will kill them now.
"Yes," Sherlock says, groans, as if Moriarty had just suggested some delightful, sexual activity.
A second later Moriarty's lips find his own, no obstacle in the way this time. Sherlock suppresses a flinch before starting to move his own lips against Moriarty's. A tongue licks against them, and Sherlock opens his mouth unwillingly to let it in, let it explore, which Moriarty does like he does everything. Teasingly, but with a hidden bite, tongue flickering in like a snake one moment, then teeth closing on his bottom lip, this time drawing blood.
It is the longest kiss Sherlock has ever been involved in.
John and Lestrade's faces disappear from the screen. Neither expression giving anything away, but Lestrade was gripping his coffee mug as if he wanted to smash it into Moriarty's face. And Sherlock rather expected it somewhere, deep down, but when Moriarty presses the button - the button - and says, 'boom', he still cries 'no' as if it surprised him.
Moriarty leaves minutes before agents of the MI5 burst into the room, followed - at his earliest convenience - by Mycroft. Sherlock sits and stares, face numb, lips still tingling slightly. Once the ropes have been removed, he stumbles past Mycroft, heedless of what he might say, of anything because he needs, he needs. He doesn't know what he needs; no, he can't have what needs because it's gone; it's gone and Moriarty played him and Sherlock knew all along that nothing he did could possibly save, save any of them and-
"Sherlock!"
He hasn't even noticed the screeching of the tires. Lestrade bursts out of his car, ignoring Donovan, brushing past his officers, almost shoving them out of the way. When he reaches Sherlock, he doesn't even hesitate before crushing him against his chest.
Sherlock - Sherlock does not faint in his arms, like a damsel in distress, but he allows himself a moment to breathe in the way Lestrade smells, his eau-de-cologne, his shampoo, the sour scent of beer, and then something that is just Lestrade, and real, and drives home the realisation that Lestrade is still alive.