I groaned into a surprisingly soft pillow as I regained consciousness. Silently, I let a moment of panic take over as I remembered the events of last night. I tried to move my hand to rub the sleep from my eyes, and found it handcuffed tightly to the headboard of what now appeared to be a large bed. I wiggled my other hand, and found that I was chained by both wrists to the headboard.
I tried to sit up and take in my surroundings, but an awful pain shot through my skull and I collapsed back onto my pillow. A thin blanket was draped over me, and when I kicked it back, my jaw dropped. I was wearing black lingerie and a man's white shirt that just reached my thighs, and not even the underwear belonged to me. Suddenly I was hyperventilating. Who had taken my clothes? Why? Where was that person now? Where was Moriarty now?
As if on cue, a cheery whistle sounded on the other side of the door to my room. I heard the clicking of a lock and he swung open the door, letting it bang loudly against the wall, reigniting my burning headache. I flinched, and struggled to get further up the bed, until my back rested against the headboard and my legs were scrunched into my chest, making me as small as I could be with my arms held out to my sides. My left ankle hurt, but I paid it no notice. I kept my head down; not wanting to see the smug grin that I knew would be spread across his face. As Moriarty crossed the room, I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to block out his presence. The mattress dipped as he sat down, and I flinched again. Moriarty chuckled and reached for me, his hand brushing through my hair. I whipped my head up and glared at him, and he removed his hand. He frowned at me like a teacher frowning at a misbehaving student, and I lowered my gaze. I was too tired and too hungry and too weak to fight. My head was still spinning and I groaned as my headache pounded in my skull.
Finding the courage to speak, I forced my voice to be steady and quiet when I addressed my kidnapper.
"Where are my clothes?" I asked, trying to ignore the underlying question of who removed them. Moriarty purred a low response.
"I couldn't let you sleep in that awful outfit, now could I? I just swapped what you were wearing for something a little more… Pleasing." He grinned, and I flushed scarlet, trying not to imagine Moriarty seeing me unclothed. His hand crept toward me again, and I tried to shuffle away. His hand caught my ankle in a tight grip, pulling my leg out from under me. I winced as he gripped my legs, surprised at the pain I felt. Unbalanced, my other legs slid out from beneath me, and I slumped to sitting on the pillow my head had rested on minutes before. Jim still gripped my ankle, where I could see mottled purple-black bruises under his fingers.
Following my gaze, Moriarty frowned and let go of my ankle, placing it and my other foot carefully on his legs, though he stared at me to tell me not to move them from where he had lain them on his lap.
"Sorry about your leg, Molly. Once you had passed out in the cab, I had my friend carry you up here. The idiot got your foot jammed in the car door and broke your ankle. We gave you something for the pain." He looked to be genuinely angry at his associate for adding to my list of injuries. I shuddered and hissed in pain as he leaned down to grab something from the floor, jarring my ankle. He straightened back up, a first aid kit in hand, and gently patted my good foot, almost sympathetically.
I tired to pull away as he took out a syringe from the box, but he caught my feet in his strong hands and pulled me further down the bed, placing them more centrally on his lap. He set the syringe down on the bed and continued rummaging in the box, finally pulling out bandages and a safety pin. He probed the flesh of my bruised foot, drawing out small gasps of pain as he reached the break. He nodded to himself, and began carefully wrapping the bandages around my foot. I groaned as he wrapped it tight, stopping any movement of the ankle, setting my foot in the right position to heal. He pinned the bandage and moved my legs off of his lap, setting the injured one down gently on the bed.
My head lay back on the pillow where it had started as a result of Moriarty's earlier tug, and he moved to my sit level with my head. I lay there, straining against the cuffs at my wrists as he bent and kissed my cheek. I turned my face quickly away, blushing pink. He chuckled and loosed my hand from the cuff closest to him, then he straddled my hips to climb over me and unlock my other hand. Both of my hands were pale and shook from lack of blood, and when I tried to use them to push myself up, they felt just as wobbly and useless as jelly. Moriarty sat by and watched me struggle from where he sat for a moment, before hoisting me into a sit and propping up a pillow behind me. He reached behind him to the table on the other side of the bed and produced a glass of water, offering it to me. I narrowed my eyes but took the glass in my shaking hands, sniffing the liquid.
"Why are you doing this?" I asked, with only a slight shake in my voice. Jim chuckled. He reached over and took the water from me, taking a deliberate gulp and handing it back. I sipped it slowly. It probably wasn't drugged if he drank it himself. Suddenly my thirst hit me and I downed the glass, relishing in the feeling of the cool liquid soothing my dry throat. He smiled, happy to see me drinking.
"Why are you doing this?" I asked again, clearer this time.
"I want you alive." He said, simply, like it was obvious. He took the glass from me and set it back on the table.
"But why do you need me alive? I mean nothing to Sherlock, I'm of no use to you." I mumbled, hating the words I was certain were true.
"Maybe so, but still, it can't be all bad having another person here, even if you are remarkably normal. Plus, there are certain enjoyable aspects of having a woman around." He reflected in an amused tone.
"Why me? I'm nothing special." I said softly as I shivered, and drew my legs carefully into my chest, hugging my knees.
"On the contrary, you were special enough to make the world believe that your friend was dead. You're more important than you think, Molly Hooper, as I believe I have told you before." He grinned at my little intake of breath as I remembered. He was right; he had told me that before. In our brief time of dating¸ I had shown up to dinner in a miserable mood, Sherlock having just insulted me with thoughtless deductions about my appearance. I had complained to Jim-from-IT that I felt so useless and ordinary around Sherlock.
"You're more important than you think Molly. To Sherlock Holmes, and to me. I think you're very important. Don't let that ass make you feel otherwise." I remembered feeling so glad that Jim was there to reassure me that I wasn't completely pointless. Now I felt only resentfulness and growing anxiety over Moriarty's plans for me.
"I'm not important," I said again, almost defiantly.
"I'm nothing, to Sherlock and to you. Not important." I repeated, and he shook his head in discontent. He crawled closer to me on the huge bed, bringing his face inches away from mine. I could smell his warm, minty breath as it hit my cheeks, and his clean, spicy scent. I felt my cheeks redden, and directed my gaze down at my hands as I fiddled with the hem of the shirt I wore. Moriarty straddled my legs, one of his legs on either side of my thighs. He spoke with an oddly soft voice, tilting my chin up so I looked at his dark eyes.
"I brought you here because you are, in fact, important to both Mr Holmes and to me. Surely that much was obvious from the fact that I didn't kill you when Sherlock proved you right in what you said on the phone. I want you here, and healthy, Molly, for my own reasons, and I intend to make sure that you stay here, and once you have recovered, that you stay healthy." Moriarty ran a soft hand up my thigh, and I batted his hand away instinctively. He gripped my wrist, bringing it to his face and breathing in my scent, and then he ran his tongue over the spot where my pulse beat against my skin. I yanked my wrist from his grasp and he captured my disgusted face between his two hands without missing a beat. I pushed ineffectually at his strong chest, trying to make him let go, but he barely even registered my shoves as he licked his soft-looking lips, staring intently at my face, watching my expression change from straining to push him away to realization as I noticed his gaze shift to my lips.
"N-" I began, only to be silenced by his mouth crushing mine, devouring my lips. He took advantage of my open, protesting mouth and slipped his tongue past my lips to flick against my own tongue. Shocked, I didn't have the sense to bite or slap him, but instead I found my lips moving with his, my tongue dancing in and out of his mouth. Jim lowered my head onto the pillow and deepened the kiss, bracing himself above me with one hand on the pillow either side of my head. I squealed as I came back to my wits and clocked who it was that I was kissing. I put both hands on his shoulders and pushed, not enough to remove him from over me, but enough to break the kiss. His face hovered just above mine, a frown creasing his forehead as he recognized that he could not win me over into compliance with one (very pleasurable) kiss. He got up and off the bed, leaving me laying on the oversized mattress. Moriarty strode to the door, turned around and gestured to a wardrobe on the wall opposite the bed.
"There are clothes in there, if you want to change out of my shirt." He smirked, then left, locking the door behind him.
My shirt. As quickly as I could on my bandaged leg, I hobbled over to the wardrobe and flung open the doors, only to groan at the assortment of lingerie and exceptionally revealing dresses that hung in neat rows. I rooted through the drawers at the bottom of the wardrobe until I found a pair of denim shorts that came halfway down my slim thighs, and an unusually low-cut tee. I slipped them on, but when I saw how much of myself was shown in just the tee, so I reluctantly slipped the white shirt back on over the top, buttoning it to hide some of the skin that remained uncovered without.
I sighed and hopped back over to the bed, slumping down and assessing my injuries. A cut on my cheek from Moriarty's ring, broken ankle, bruised wrists with some cuts from the tight cuffs, generally bruised all over.