#mormorproposal

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To say Sebastian is good at his job is unnecessary and inaccurate. He doesn’t need his ego stroked and he isn’t good; he’s the best money can buy. That’s why he’s the one at Moriarty’s side, at his back, his beck and call, his bedside carpet, bruising his knees. 

All the skill in the world wouldn’t make occasional injuries avoidable, though. Nothing to be done but smile and get on with it. 

Sometimes it’s only a concrete abrasion. Sometimes it’s all ten fingernails torn off, because Sebastian got gold stars in RTI and he’ll be fucked to hell and back before he yields to anyone, to anyone– well, you know. Else. 

The first time happened in Jim’s flat, before they lived together, Sebastian sprawled in the guest bathtub, all bloodstained briefs and an open gash from a wild knife swing splitting his outer thigh. He’d propped the first aid kit on the toilet seat for easy access, grinning at the message scrawled in sharpie on the inner lid, YOU FUCKED UP, and it probably would’ve been funny even without the blood loss helping things along. 

He hears Jim creeping down the hall on socked feet, senses his presence in the doorway, lets Jim think he didn’t, because that brand of lie is the only sort he ever manages to pull off these days. 

Jim stares and Sebastian rubs betadine generously over the wound, goosebumps rising, part unease and part Pavlovian reaction, and Jim doesn’t say anything, doesn’t move or mutter or twitch. The stillness is so fucking unsettling that Seb looks up, drawls, “Hey, baby, like what you–” and chokes on his words, because Jim is looking at him with nothing less than fascination.

He hates himself a bit over how it punches the breath out of him. Only a bit, because it can conceivably be dismissed as something physical. Jim’s focused gaze, his undivided interest, feels overwhelming. He has no idea why it’s being directed at him here, now. He wets his lips. Makes an aborted movement to swab his leg again. “–what you see?” 

They look at each other. Or, Sebastian looks at Jim, lifeblood oozing down the drain, and Jim looks at his leg. 

Sebastian shifts and winces. It hurts, sends pulses of electricity racing up his nerves with every movement, but he’s had worse.

Jim pads over. He still isn’t talking and it’s bugging the hell out of Sebastian, because he may not understand Jim, probably won’t ever come close, but he’s good at interpreting the man’s moods even if it’s impossible to predict them. Silence usually means big fucking danger, but he isn’t reading that right now. Jim’s eyes aren’t mad. They’re a flawless mirror black in the low light.

He perches on the porcelain and leans over. His gaze is still hovering below Sebastian’s belt and if there wasn’t so much blood missing from his body, it’d probably stir something on principal. “Does it hurt?” he asks, droll, and Sebastian scoffs, blood loss and the comedown of adrenaline making him feel lightheaded. “D'you mean the knife wound?”

Jim reaches down. Sebastian lets him, though it’s weird, the gentle brush of fingers over his skin. Jim isn’t careful, not in this way, not with bodies and especially not with Sebastian’s body. He can’t say the light pressure is doing anything for him, but it’s Jim so he just sits back and watches, a little woozy.

The fingers trail down, nails carving rivers through the sick yellow-brown antiseptic. They stop a few millimeters from the edge of the cut. Sebastian lets out a slow, measured breath that he’d apparently been holding, gaze steady. 

“Yeah. It does,” he says softly. 

Jim leans closer, hair falling into his eyes at this angle. He appears more scientist than madman right now, utterly absorbed in his task, in Sebastian, even if it’s just part of him, and isn’t that nice? 

Why are you looking at me like that, he wants to ask, can’t, knows how his voice would sound coming out even if he made it a challenge.

He stays silent. Jim slides his index finger down the length of the incision, both sides of the split flesh pressed tight together by the angle he’s sitting at, and it doesn’t hurt, but the nerves there are hyper-sensitive enough that the tiny ridges of Jim’s fingerprint feel like sandpaper. Like a rough handjob too soon after orgasm. 

Jim lifts his leg, gentle, still fucking gentle, some sort of game Sebastian can’t figure out right now. He looks strange around the edges, and a moment’s thought reveals this has something to do with the set of his eyes, not the way the room is tilting around them both. 

He sucks in a breath, suddenly reminded of that saying about the soft parts and man with the knives. (Something about exposing them at every opportunity, right?)

“Lending a helping hand, then? You wouldn’t happen to be A-positive, would you?” he asks, smiles, twitchy, at his own joke. Jim blinks at him, slow and smiling. 

Jim presses down hard on either side of it.

Everything goes white. Sebastian screams. His hands are wrapped around Jim’s wrists before he can blink, tight enough to grind delicate bones under his fingers, thigh throbbing along with his heartbeat. “What in the fuck,” he bites out when he can breathe again, shifting his weight off the leg. Jim had dropped it. His heel hit the tub hard but it’s nothing, nothing compared to the agony in his leg. His goddamn ears are ringing.

The smile doesn’t leave Jim’s face, but it does take on a significantly more threatening tinge. “Don’t be weak, darling,” he says through gritted teeth, “buck up now, don’t be boring,” and tugs his hands away pointedly.

He doesn’t get far. To both of their surprise, Sebastian doesn’t let go.

He looks down at his leg, confirms that it is in fact fucking bleeding again, but it doesn’t look significantly worse, and by the time he looks back, the interest is fading fast from Jim’s face, replaced by annoyance and something like disappointment. 

No, Sebastian thinks, reeling, because he does not disappoint Jim, and then, am I really going to let him poke me like a science experiment just to keep his interest?

—

Sebastian lets it happen. Jim is interested. After, he crawls into the tub on top of Sebastian and proves it, and Seb even comes before he passes out.  

The benefits don’t stop there; he wakes up in the bathroom with crusted blood covering his lower body and cum on his chest, but there’s a slipshod bandage strapped tight to his thigh, and a folded towel under his head, which is about enough to be getting on with.

And the bruises on Jim’s wrists go all pretty, purple and black. When Sebastian gets hurt, he looks intimidating. When Jim gets hurt, he looks like a fucking abuse victim. Seb likes the stares they get in public whenever Jim’s sleeves ride up, when he decides they should go clubbing for the night and dons something short-sleeved and clinging.

The way people glare at him, as if James fucking Moriarty is his victim. It’s hilarious.

The bruises stick around for weeks.

—

The second time, Jim creeps up from behind and wraps his arms around Sebastian’s torso, cracked and broken ribs groaning at the constricting pressure of his arms, and he does seem to actually be listening, ear to his back and fingers twitching with every little movement Seb makes. 

The thing is, he could resist this in the right headspace, if he was actually expecting it. Instead his knees nearly give out and he cries out like a dying animal, sharp pain shooting through his chest cavity. Every breath feels like fucking agony. He barely resists the urge to spin around and slam Jim’s body into the wall until he lets go.

The smaller man sighs, a rare, almost happy noise, and Sebastian tries his best not to breathe. Jim must go up on his toes, because a tender, lingering kiss is pressed to the nape of his neck where he’s most sensitive.

His knees do buckle, then.

Jim keeps him there.

—

Sebastian knows Jim doesn’t do this with other people. 

Trying to decipher his motives is useless, but Sebastian can’t help the little voice that whispers, that means it has to be because it’s you.

—

There isn’t always sex, and it isn’t always an event. Sometimes it’s as simple as sucking Seb’s tongue into his mouth after he accidentally bites it. 

But nothing about Jim is predictable, and the downshot of this is that eventually, whenever he chooses to ignore whatever trauma’s befallen Sebastian’s body instead of making it worse, it feels like a punishment.