Notes: Inspired by Orson Welles' very sex portrayal of Moriarty in the 1950's radio plays. All the dialogue is taken from either the radio play or the book.
Warnings: gunplay (but nothing graphic/gratuitous)
Sherlock Holmes lay sprawled over his armchair, back propped on one arm of it and long legs draped over the other. He was playing his violin with a focus it had received so rarely of late as nearly his whole being had been caught up in pursuit of Moriarty and his criminal organization. He was playing a soft but sweet fantasia to honor the fine morning, when a change in the air of the room drew his attention to the door.
"Good morning," the man standing there greeted Holmes as his playing screeched to a surprised halt and he jerked fully upright.
"Professor Moriarty," he breathed, recognizing the man that hovered in the open door to his sitting room, though it was the first time they had met face to face. "Good morning to you," he responded dazedly to the other man's salutation.
Moriarty just stood there, his face swaying slightly from side to side as his almost reptilian eyes slid over Holmes' frame with a disturbing intensity. "How very charmingly you play," he observed at last, though his eyes were not on the violin. They rested instead, with a peculiar glimmer, on Holmes' chest where it peeked out from the half-open front of his dressing gown. The detective felt a shiver down his spine at both the unexpected richness of his enemy's voice and at the indescribable emotion that glittered in his gaze.
It was not hatred or anger (Holmes had seen enough of those in his years as a detective) or any other emotion he might have expected. No, it was the lack of any of those that made him truly apprehensive at that moment. "How kind of you to say so," he responded, distantly amused at the banality of their conversation. He very carefully placed his violin on the side table, using the motion to mask his reaching into the drawer to remove his revolver, which he surreptitiously slid into the pocket of his dressing gown.
"You have… rather less cranial development than I might have expected." Moriarty's gaze slid caressingly up the column of Holmes' throat to meet Holmes' stare. Fighting the urge to clutch the neck of his dressing gown tightly closed, Holmes discreetly cocked his gun in his pocket.
Was it to Holmes' foolish hope – that Moriarty might remain unaware of his own danger – that the criminal mastermind referred? "Whereas you, on the contrary, have rather more that I had imagined," Holmes replied, actually meaning it. As that intense stare continued, he felt an overwhelming urge to either shout at the other man or to laugh most inappropriately in a fit of nerves. Instead, he opted to try and divert the conversation. "You will recollect, however, that Beethoven's outdid us both." Moriarty chuckled in response and Holmes shivered again as gooseflesh prickled on his arms. "However, our personal characteristics are hardly relevant to the present situation." He kept the gun in his pocket trained on Moriarty as the man stalked slowly closer and closer. "What have you really got to say to me?" Holmes demanded, rising completely from his chair, as Moriarty's intense stare never left him.
The Napoleon of Crime continued his predatory movement toward the detective. "Well perhaps I only suggest it, of course…" His deep voice trailed off as he came within a foot of Holmes. Then, in a swift and sinuous move, he was behind Holmes with his left hand on the detective's shoulder and his right covering the hand holding the gun. "Perhaps it is a dangerous habit to finger loaded firearms in the pocket of one's dressing gown." Holmes found himself strangely unable to pull away as the vibrations of that voice thrummed against his back and the warm breath of it tickled his ear. "Ah," Moriarty exclaimed as his hand moved over Holmes' and the gun it held, "I see you favor the Mauser type, Mr. Holmes, and without a silencer." His left hand was removed from the shoulder it was holding. Holmes could feel him withdraw something from a pocket. The hand moved to hover before his eyes, holding the professor's own unique gun with an attachment that Holmes easily identified as a silencer. "You must permit me to present you sometime with one of these small devices of my own design." Moriarty twisted his wrist slightly to better display the device, his voice still close against Holmes' ear. Then, the muzzle of the revolver was brought to his mouth to caress his lower lip as Moriarty continued, "They are quite convenient in avoiding unpleasant noise." Holmes felt a frisson of fear move down his spine, the tremor communicating itself to the man behind him, whose low chuckle caused another shiver, the meaning of which he did not wish to examine.
In an attempt to regain some control of the encounter – and himself – Holmes replied, "How very kind of you, Professor." He kept his tone as light and flippant as possible. "You must ask the hangman to deliver it to me as your last request." He was unsure at that moment which of them he most wished to remind of their current situation.
"You evidently don't know me, Mr. Holmes." Danger purred out of Moriarty's voice as he slid the muzzle of his gun slowly down the column of the detective's neck in a chill caress. He rested the revolver for the briefest moment in the hollow of Holmes' throat before continuing its motion along a collarbone, drawing the fabric away to fall off the shoulder. Holmes gasped and shivered yet again as the cold steel of the gun and the heated flesh of the hand holding it came to a rest on the bare skin of his chest, just below the collarbone. As the moist warmth of Moriarty's breath whispered across the joint of neck and shoulder, a small part of the detective was glad he had as yet neglected to don a shirt that morning.
"On the contrary," Holmes finally replied, desperately trying to ignore a butterfly sensation in his stomach that was only half due to fear. "I think it is fairly evident that I do." For months the detective had practically eaten, drunk, and breathed Moriarty. He knew the man's moves, plans, and reactions as well as he did his own.
Or so he had thought. The confidence he would have felt in that statement but ten minutes ago was lost – lost to the undeniable thrill of this encounter. He experimentally twitched his right hand, the one holding the gun, in his pocket and felt Moriarty tighten his grip around it. Uncertain of his own intent behind the repeated question, Holmes asked, "What have you really got to say to me?"
"All that I have to say has already crossed your mind."
"Then possibly my answer has crossed yours."
"You stand fast?" The question was whispered directly against Holmes' ear, bringing heat to the detective's cheeks.
"Absolutely," he replied, though he offered no resistance as the professor slowly withdrew their joined hands and the Mauser from Holmes' pocket.
There was an ever so slight brush of Moriarty's lips against the shell of his ear as the professor sighed. "It has been an intellectual treat to me to see the way in which you have grappled with this affair." Moriarty moved their right hands to the loose sash of Holmes' dressing gown and, with the muzzle of the detective's revolver, pulled it completely open. "And I say, unaffectedly, that it would be a grief to me to be forced to take any extreme measure."
"Danger is part of my trade." Holmes felt the flush expand from his cheeks to his whole face and down his neck as the Mauser was slid into the waistband of his trousers. After so much time and energy spent on pursuing the very man who now teased the detective with his own gun, the trouser were quite loose and the revolver and their fingertips had little trouble slipping inside.
"It is not danger," Moriarty replied, still in that heated whisper. He moved his left hand once more, slowly gliding the muzzle of his own gun down Holmes' chest. "It is inevitable destruction."
Holmes caught his breath in a sharp inhalation and trembled as Moriarty's gun stroked across a nipple. He threw his head back against the professor's shoulder and drew another gasping breath, his nostrils filling with the other man's strangely heady scent of herbs and gunpowder, as the motion was repeated. His left hand moved up involuntarily to grasp Moriarty's shoulder. The professor's responding chuckle was so much warmer, so much breathier this time. Together it seemed, they caressed Holmes' gun low across his abdomen while Moriarty's gun went to tease the other nipple this time. With a pant that was nearly a tiny moan of pleasure, Holmes shuddered against Moriarty's body, bringing his backside in contact with a hot solidity in the professor's trousers. The detective felt an answering heat begin to pool in his own groin.
No! When Holmes' dizzied mind finally processed what was happening – what was about to happen – he jerked away from the man – the criminal – at his back, pulling his right hand free and training his pistol on the man. "I must really ask you to excuse me." He drew deep shuddering breaths as he faced the man who now so thoroughly dominated his consciousness. "In the… pleasure of our conversation I am afraid that I have neglected business of importance elsewhere."
Moriarty's breathing and coloring were as uneven as Holmes' as he replied, "Very well then." He made no effort to disguise the regret in his voice – or the emotion, which the detective finally allowed himself to recognize as lust, in his eyes. "It seems a pity, but I've done what I could." Those reptilian eyes roved over Holmes' body once more and the detective reflexively pulled his dressing gown closed. The professor's gaze returned to Holmes' face. "I tell you solemnly, Sherlock Holmes, that if you are clever enough to bring destruction on me, you may rest assured that I shall do as much to you."
Holmes could no longer meet the hypnotic intensity of that stare. He lowered his eyes to Moriarty's shoulder as he answered, "You have paid me several… compliments during this interview, Professor. Let me pay you one in return when I say that if I were assured of the former eventuality, I would most cheerfully accept the latter." He meant every word – Professor Moriarty was far too dangerous a man to be left at liberty in the world. And this Napoleon of crime's downfall, however regrettable some hateful corner of the detective's mind might find it, would no doubt be his greatest contribution to society.
"I can promise you the one, but not the other." He could still feel the heat and mesmerism of Moriarty's gaze.
"Good day, Professor." He indicated the door with the gun still in his right hand.
Moriarty made a small nod and moved to the doorway of the sitting room. Before he exited, he turned back. Holmes steeled himself and met that gaze for what he hoped (feared) would be the last time. "I think 'goodbye' is the word, Mr. Sherlock Holmes. Goodbye." With that final, hushed word of parting, Professor Moriarty left 221B Baker Street.
It was many hours, however, before his lingering smell of herbs and gunpowder, and the sensation of his voice, breath, and touch, left Sherlock Holmes.