Prompts: You angered Jim so much, he has beaten you personally and (you feel) left to die. Of course, you won't die because he needs you. You'll come pretty close. (Torture me. Abuse me. Leave me for dead. Torture a loved one. Remind me of my failures.
Genre: torture, abuse (emotionally and physically), injuries.
Summary: Sebastian has to pay for his mistakes.
Disclaimer: Story is mine. James Moriarty and Sebastian Moran belong to Sir Conan Doyle. BBC Sherlock to the BBC. No profit made. Just for fun.

Jim Moriarty was silent, which wasn't a good sign at all. Sebastian would prefer it if he had shouted but instead, the man looked at him from underneath those thin eyebrows, his eyes darker than ever. Sebastian wished he could just jump out of his chair and just run. He had witnessed Jim's wrath before; when one of the drivers had accidentally crashed Jim's previous Rolls. Sebastian had merely watched how his employer had used a knife to make the driver pay for his mistake just to be fired afterwards.

So Sebastian knew he was in deep trouble. He hadn't crashed Jim's Rolls tonight; he had done something far worse. And he was going to pay for it.

'He got in my shot,' he told his boss for the tenth time. 'I had the target locked, but then – he stepped to the left, instead of the right! It was his own damned fault, Jim!'

'I don't care who got shot tonight, Sebastian,' his boss said and shook his head. 'But with the client dead, who's going to pay us now?' he rolled his head to the side, his dark eyes piercing into the sniper's grays.

Sebastian swallowed.

'How important was he?'

'More than you can possibly imagine,' Jim spat the words at his employee and his fist hit the desk with such force it made his laptop tremble.

He swallowed again, not daring to take his eyes off the other man as he shook his head again.

'It wasn't my fault.'

'Everything was your fault, Sebastian.' Jim hissed, and rubbed his brow as he sat back in his chair again. 'You once assured me you were the best marksman out there but yet you managed to kill the wrong target? You disappointed me.'

Sebastian didn't know what to fear more; Jim's anger or his disappointment.

'I'm sorry,' he apologized, even though he kept insisting it wasn't his own fault.

Jim wouldn't have it and rose from his seat.

'Not good enough, Moran,' he said and shook his head, slowly strutting around the desk and towards Sebastian. 'You weren't good enough,' the criminal said as he rounded Sebastian's chair, letting his hand slide past his throat. Sebastian swallowed as he felt those long, thin fingers drag past his Adam's apple.

'But I'll make you better,' Jim's mouth was suddenly close to his right ear. 'But first, you're going to pay for your mistakes.'

He heard the sound of some device charging up to full power, and a felt a numbing shock as Jim placed the stun gun against his shoulder. His entire body tensed and then he slid down on the floor, unconscious.

He woke up on the dark concrete floor of the cellar; the torture chamber in Jim's mansion. He realised he was in bigger trouble than he had expected; not many people left this chamber unscathed. But not even Ian the driver had been brought down here.

So either he was going to pay for what he had done, or it was one of Jim's sick fantasies to see him get tortured.

He figured it would be a combination of both.

He tried to move, but his hands were tied together in front of him. He tried his feet. Likewise. His shivered as the cold concrete floor touched his bare skin. He was naked? The fact that he was tied up didn't concern him as much as his wondering what had happened to his clothes.

'You pissed yourself like an infant, Moran. So I took the liberty to rid you of your clothes,' he heard Jim speak as the man circled around him like a predator did to his prey.

'I figured you'd get off on seeing me naked in this room some time,' Sebastian croaked and rolled onto his stomach and attempted to push himself up on his knees. But Jim's foot pushed against his shoulder and he rolled back on his side again.

'Stay down, or I'll make you piss yourself again,' Jim said as he charged the stun gun again, holding it up for Sebastian to see.

But Sebastian wasn't going to let himself get tortured that easily. He had been tortured before, and he wasn't planning on letting it happen again. He'd just have to try and reason with the devil.

'Untie me, and we'll talk about it,' he whimpered, his muscles trembling uncontrollably. 'Cut my pay – whatever you want.'

Jim pursed his lips and shook his head.

'Too easy, tiger,' he sighed as he threateningly turned the stun gun in his palm. 'I want to make sure you learn from your mistakes this time.'

'Oh I have, believe me,' Sebastian groaned as he looked down at his naked body, feeling awkwardly exposed. His employer had seen him naked more often than his own mother had, but right now, he didn't feel comfortable without his clothes at all. 'Making me wet myself is quite humiliating enough.'

'You're not here to be humiliated,' Jim stated as he turned his back to Sebastian and slowly walked over to a table that stood against the wall.

He watched how his employer placed the stun gun down, and began to take off his jacket. He hung it neatly over the chair that stood in the corner, and slowly began to take off his tie as well, carefully placing the silver tie-pin on the seat. He unbuttoned the first two buttons of his shirt and rolled his head from side to side. Sebastian could hear his vertebra crack. He then started to roll up his sleeves and approached Sebastian again, the marksman looked up at his employer, his eyes wide with fear and his brows furrowed.

'You're going to get hurt,' the criminal said as he crouched down in front of him, his hand underneath Sebastian's chin, his nails painfully digging into his jaw.

'Jim – please,' he pleaded, and Jim smiled, suddenly moving a knife into his view.

'If you don't stop begging, Sebastian, I will cut your tongue out,' he threatened, running the knife past Sebastian's bottom lip, cutting his flesh open as he pressed the blade into his chin. Blood stained the silver blade, and Jim moved it to his own mouth. He licked the blood off the blade, his eyes still ominously fixed on Sebastian's.

He gathered the last bit of courage he had and licked his lip, tasting his own blood.

'I'm going to need that tongue,' he noted. 'You—might miss it if you do that.'

Jim howled with laughter and moved in closer, letting his tongue drag over Sebastian's lips before placing his own fully on Sebastian's mouth. For a moment, Sebastian thought it would end here; that Jim would accept his apology and release him. But that would be too easy.

The tip of the knife was pushed into his abdomen, and Sebastian broke off the kiss as he cried with pain. Jim got up and stepped back as Sebastian rolled onto his back, pressing his tied hands against his stomach. The marksman looked down, whimpering with fear as he saw the handle sticking out of his body, blood pouring out of it.

'Oh, Jesus, Jim!' he cried and turned his back to the sadistpressing his hands tightly against his wound to try and stop the bleeding. 'Jesus Christ!'

'Not Jesus, Basher,' Jim said as he rounded on Sebastian again, crouching down in front of him and closing his hand around the handle again, twisting it deeper into Sebastian's stomach. He grabbed Sebastian by his hair, pulling his head back and moved his face in so that he was only an inch removed from his captor's face.

'The devil,' he breathed before fiercely kissing the injured sniper again. But Sebastian had no intentions on kissing him back right now. His hands were trying to stop Jim's hand from pressing the knife deeper into his body.

'Now,' Jim resumed as he parted from Sebastian's lips. 'Tell me what went wrong.'

Sebastian gasped with pain, his eyes wide with shock as he watched his boss with disbelief.

'Wha- Ji—I'm—Fuck! I'm- ah!'

'Tell me!' Jim hissed as he tugged at his hair. 'Tell me why you failed!'

'I—Oh, God I—J-Jim the k- the knife, I—

'TELL ME!'

'I—I shot the wrong-ta-target!' Sebastian cried with his eyes tightly closed, his voice echoing through the concrete cellar. 'I—sh-shot the wr-wrong target!'

'Why?' Jim mouthed, pushing the knife deeper into the marksman, as if trying to push the words out of him.

'Be-because I was too hasty! I—I could have wait-ed but I thought the sho-shot would be good!'

Jim smiled with satisfaction and released the sniper, standing up and stepping away as he looked down at the bleeding man on the floor.

'Linger on that thought,' he said as he picked up a towel to wipe the blood off his hands, his back turned towards Sebastian. 'And we'll see if you've learned your lesson,' and he walked up the stairs, leaving Sebastian to bleed on the concrete floor.

He was still where Jim had left him, whimpering and shivering, on the concrete floor of the cellar. A puddle of blood was smeared on the floor, and Sebastian was desperately holding his hands pressed against his stomach. His head was spinning, and he knew he was close to passing out. But he had lost a lot of blood and he was cold; falling asleep now would possibly mean he wouldn't wake up again.

But the pain in his body was bearable in comparison to the pain in his mind. He had suspected Jim would make him pay for his mistakes, but leaving him to bleed in a dark and cold cellar had been beyond his expectations. He had thought the man would take pleasure in beating him up, not stab him and leave him to bleed to death.

He suddenly wondered if Jim was going to leave him to die here. He had made an atrocious mistake tonight so maybe Jim was trying to get rid of him by killing him slowly.

He wondered if he had ever meant anything to Jim; if he had meant enough to him to keep him alive. He could only wait to answer that question.

Finally, the door opened again and Jim came walking down the stairs. Sebastian forced his eyes open, and looked up at the figure that stood on the bottom of the stairs, looking down at him with a look of pure hate and disgust on his face. And Sebastian knew he had come to kill him.

For the first time in years, Sebastian cried. He had always thought he had never feared death, but the idea of being killed by the man he had made love to for the past year was too much for him. He didn't want to die this way, not by the hand of Jim Moriarty.

'Ji-Jim,' he pleaded, dragging himself towards the other man, his face wet with tears. 'P-please, I—I'm sorry!'

'I told you to stop begging, Sebastian,' the man spoke, but he voice was oddly soft this time.

He crouched down in front of Sebastian, and pulled the knife from his stomach, quickly swapping it for a towel, as he pressed tightly against the sniper's stomach.

'Do-don't kill me—ple-please!'

'I'm not going to,' Jim spoke in the same emotionless voice, his eyes never meeting Sebastian's, and he pulled a syringe from his pocket, took the cap off and stuck it into Sebastian's abdomen. The morphine entered his bloodstream and within seconds, the pain disappeared.

He closed his eyes with delight, as the warmth of the painkiller spread through his body. He stopped clutching at his belly and laid flat on the ground, his lips parted as he took deep breaths.

Jim used the knife to cut his bindings and forced Sebastian's hands to hold onto the towel as he left to fetch the medical kit. He returned, disinfected his hands and the wound, and began to stitch the lacerationas carefully as he could.

When he finished, he washed his hands at the sink, threw a dressing gown over Sebastian's lower body and walked up the stairs again.

'Don't ever disappoint me again, Sebastian,' threatened.

And Sebastian never did again.