the primordium.

hey howdy hey! obligatory pinned post explaining that this blog is a hub world for various muses and associated side-blogs: if you’re here for some writing shenanigans with me then you’re probably in the right place.

though communication may at times come from this main blog, i may end up speaking on behalf of other side ones where it comes to thread ideas and pitches.

A-Z nsfw headcanons:

impact — do they like spanking/being spanked? whipping/being whipped? hitting/being hit? any other kind of impact play not listed here?

He used to be very shy and uncertain about this; he's a peaceful creature by nature, one who will avoid situations that remotely threaten him with physical discomfort. It therefore took some time for him to be persuaded into this type of play, and when he was it was largely on the merit of the psychological pleasure induced by degradation. With a trusted partner, he can get intensely aroused by this degree of objectification. He prefers the use of props both for the hands-off nature of them and for the assist in impact strength; he's a big guy, and won't be able to feel it as much otherwise.

In disciplining another it's definitely a tool in his kit, however one he uses sparingly— with point and with purpose. He plays more with enforced absence when in the dominant role, punishing through methodical denial and the withholding of pleasure. Use of impact therefore has its place rather in the fine line transitioning between the intention of providing reward and delivering discipline; a single, sharp note of instruction. He'll use his own hand as well as props in this instance, knowing the power he can put behind it, but if he does he'll almost certainly be wearing a glove.

praise — do they like being praised? is there anything specific they like being praised for? do they like praising their partner(s)?

Having grown up a high-achieving, well-mannered heir to a respectable household Mycroft has an ambivalent response towards praise on the surface. It fails to register or prompt his interest in most contexts, including those in the bedroom. The significant exception is when he is expressly being praised for taking part in something perverse or forbidden, or otherwise enjoying an act that should traditionally provoke shame in someone. It is while in act of violating norms and expectations that he draws arousal from praise, scratching an itch of a desire to be praised for being shameful and obscene.

Having rather precise expectations for his surroundings, he is both fair and judicious with his praise on the other side of the equation. Performing as desired or to his exacting standards earns praise, at times accompanied by reward, reprieve or a physical gesture of affection. He takes great pleasure in encouraging good behaviour both in and outside the bedroom, and so finds it a natural role to assume likewise in both realms— it is of interest to him therefore to pair with partners with a penchant of misbehaving, as he does in fact actively enjoy the pursuit of discipline.

queen — are they a size queen? do they prefer length, girth, or both? do they like textures?

While not a ruling factor, size is certainly an advantage with him. The reasons for this are of course entirely practical in nature. As a large man motivated in sex by the promise of profound sensual indulgence coupled with physical gratification, there will simply be more accessible to him in what he can grasp and feel that would scale to the relative size of someone. He can't help but view smaller or more petite individuals as somewhat delicate by comparison, which would create an additional barrier for him to overcome before intimacy could be enjoyed without any lingering hesitation.

London, England. August 1872.

"Do you remember when I spoke to you of gravity?"

Condensation beads against the sheer walls of the bottle mounted on the mahogany-framed cabinet before him. Retrieved from the cellar but moments prior, James recalls that this particular specimen of sparkling rosé had been imported from an esteemed Champenois he had kept in touch with following his travels through Europe some years ago. The beverage therefore took pride of place as one of many eclectic and exotic treasures he now harboured in the storage rooms to his London home.

Freshly uncorked as of this moment, James felt both the occasion and the company called for such vaunted sampling in material luxury.

"Of the unseen force that compels two objects of significant mass to meet in the vastness of space?" He pours two glasses with the artistic flair of a Mayfair hotel barkeep, before setting the deep emerald-tinted bottle aside and taking both up into his hands; he turns, regarding his guest with fondness and esteem in equal measure.

"That is how I have seen each of you these past years, charting trajectories headed towards inevitable collision." With a silken, loping gait does James approach his Reaper's seated figure, bending low enough that he might present to her this humble offering of wine. The unbuttoned placket to his evening dress shirt dips further still as he does this, revealing a flash of clavicle before he gradually drags himself upright again.

"And with collision, comes fireworks."

He all rolls the word across the surface of his tongue with great indulgence, lamp light dancing in his eyes as he regards Nix with evergreen fascination. Another smile, slow and steepened with cumulative years of patience.

nsfw: mentions of breath play, blood play, BDSM.

Immediately follows The Rising Curtain.

29 Montague Street, London. October, 1873.

You eschew the crown I offer with a turn of your head and accompanying smile that I would venture to label as bashful in nature. Blushing Endymion, fate would have you sleep while all the opportunities of this world prostrate themselves at your feet. Your languor remains as immutable as the laws that govern our stars, in the vein that I have found myself compelled to study each in the pursuit of previously obscured paradigms of fact-rooted truth.

One can calculate the exact velocity of cosmic objects with sufficient observation. You are worth more than they will ever acknowledge.

I am prophet and priest for my beliefs, uncompromising in my zealotry. You know this, it is why you cannot tear yourself from the game we have drawn between ourselves. We push and pull upon each other's faults and foibles, challenging and questioning each other in a riposte-led contest designed to prompt debate, reflection and growth. Of all the dull creatures to inhabit this Earth only your quickness of mind can unmoor me, only your tongue is sharp enough to meet with mine.

It is enough friction to compel any man to submit to his most base craving, pushed to the brink and continuously stimulated for his own pleasure. Psychologically to be certain, though how often I have found myself desirous of breaching the intimacy of your corporeal space. Your walls as tall as those that guarded Troy in ages past, I fear it shall be another ten years hence before I see them fall— even as you sit across from me now, waistcoat unbuttoned and eyes burning with curiosity.

Our game of chess is long ended, with the clocks stopped and our seating arrangement adjusted in turn. A crystal decanter that had previously housed the finest single malt whisky I have ever partaken in now empty upon the side table next to you: two glasses damp from use, two bellies fired from depths within. No feature nor furniture separates our chairs now, leaving your wool snug feet to stretch languorously across the Isfahan rug until they rest a mere few inches from mine.

The butter-hued light gleaming from your study's lamps remains low, while the moon sits pinned to the apex of its nocturnal trajectory— your somnial throne awaits, but you have yet to send me from your side.

I know these words you speak in silence to me.

Newton's Third Law of Motion: for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. You are waiting for me to induce momentum, to meet your static form with oncoming force— you are Jupiter ruling the heavens on high, and like a hurtling comet I fall into the cavernous depths of your gravity.

My knees sink to the floor before I am even conscious of the fact, drawn between your legs as though I am in the act of seeking supplication. Your eyes shimmer in the cooling hues of liquid mercury, unblinking in their judgement: ever watching me, waiting upon my confession. Does your resting heart skip a beat now? Has a flutter stirred the bars of that silk-bound cage of a chest before me?

Might I then pursue what is forbidden? Pomegranate to my lips, I wet my tongue with sin to take my share.

Without censure or reservation, I begin to speak to you of the dream I have to strip these cumbersome fabrics barring the touch of my hands from the weight of your thighs— are your undergarments linen this day, or cotton perhaps? You know as well as I, that a curious mind must learn.

I tell you then that I would pluck upon your fastening buttons, shape your naked calves within the cradle of my palm and render unto your flesh a most salacious adulation in dotage. Warm with reverence, I would spoil every inch of you with the worship that compelled church spires to pierce the very marrow of heaven. I would build cathedrals upon the surface of your skin, sing praises against your ear with the fervor of God's choir echoing in one voice.

Does this thought not please you? Does it not make your slowing breath quiver, while your softer hairs stand with anxious attention even as I speak these words to you?

How my fingers would then press deep into the folds of your decadent flesh, offer you respite and further invigoration by the same stroke. Again, and again, from the ample curvature of your thighs down to the rounded protrusion of your ankle. I would commit myself to massaging the calluses from your very feet, as our Lord led by example on his last night before crucifixion. For you will be the death of me, Mr Holmes. As surely as you already threaten to supplant the final vestiges of my faith.

My spirit is no longer holy in your presence.

Upon the precipice of this revelation I would find myself compelled to ask once more whether your most tender intimates have felt the tongue of another before? I invoke both God and the Devil to decree that I have been the first: the sole transgressor of your bounty and garden. Tell me again that I have been the only one, my heart rebels at the thought of sharing you in the past, your present or our future.

You know the indulgence with which I would then taste you, bring you to erection and through the art of my tongue render you unto the very brink of divine satisfaction. Ah, but the twinkle in your eye now tells me that I have yet to surpass expectations in the regaling of tonight's most jealous intention. This unmet intrigue is met with keen counter, for I see your languid expression shift with piqued curiosity when I speak of ceasing before your culmination, and rather drawing your half-pleasured self by hand within the closing doors to your waiting bedroom. Turning then both lock and key, forbidding all chance of interruption.

Understand how I would now have you warmed with that oral exercise. Perhaps the heat would have already blossomed beneath those plush cheeks of yours, mellowing your smile with a most empyrean supplication. I see your carefully maintained hair daring to rebel by then— your pomade comes apart in the evenings, and certainly would not keep for long under the excitement of such rarefied stimulation.

Obsidian curls sprouting like coils of ivy from their waxen confines, the starched collar and cuffs fall away and at last the world would begin to see you. Not the mirror image you have reflected back at the rest of them: perfect, practiced, placid smile. No. I would have your heart raw, beating and bared to me. Only, only me.

And so I would then see you lain within your own bedroom. Are your covers still of that vine-patterned collection in moss green? How they flatter your complexion: earthen, warm and fictile. But this is not the hue of the tongue your hidden self whispers to me with beneath the dark of the midnight moon. I tell you that I have seen it, and it is red— red as roses abandoned in a desperate winter, red as blood coursing from an angry wound, red as grapefruit flesh stolen to feed another's stomach.

Ruby fated to adorn someone else's crown. Pretty little thing, they would use you up only to discard what remains without a second's thought or hesitation. What a waste, I consider it tantamount to sin. No, my dear. There are sins in this world more deserving of you. Allow me therefore to be Virgil in your Inferno. Guide, protector and authority.

This is how you would find yourself naked and bound upon your own bed, hands secured by corded rope to the black iron bars above your head, my own red silk kerchief as your blindfold and a fastened strip of leather to safeguard your silence. Others yet attend to this house, and these are the solutions to render you fearless for your own indulgence.

With every layer of material at last divested from your person, your skin would thus be bared to the chilling breath of these night airs— to the brush of my fingertips, a deepening scratch here and there. How you would shiver and ache in want of my grasp, a sort of muffled and mewling desperation. Should I inform you then that our evening together has only just begun? I think you already know that pleading will only inspire me to indulge in a much diminished mercy, which rather paints an eager picture for you.

Patience. It has always been the quality I most admire in you.

I would ignore your wanting manhood in this vein. Instead I would shift you onto your side using the weight of my own body, upturn your softened jaw between clutching fingertips and lower my maw against the crook of your exposed neck— a biting sting followed by the sweetened kiss of one's own velvet tongue. More than anything else, I want you to trust me completely. So I would with my other hand reach down and grasp your sack between us, trace the thrumming line of your carotid with my lips and whisper this promise against your bound figure.

I will be gentle. I would be gentle, you know this.

It is why I would ensure that we spend a precious clutch of time together just so, in shared quietude. Breathing in sync, your heartbeat against my ear: time enough for you to grow familiar with your bonds, for your wanting erection to diminish in turn. I know, I know— I would hush you through each stifled whine. But there is method to my madness. Perhaps you would understand once I slide a tightening band about the base of your cock, murmuring through a tooth-shimmering smile that you'll thank me later for the measure.

A silk cushion slid under your strong hips would grant you the reprieve of some elevation, as I would then roll you from your side onto your resting back again. Here would preparations begin in earnest. My manicured fingers would work your fat like clay, molding your softness into fistfuls of tenderised flesh; good enough to eat. Such that I could not resist gratifying my tongue with your myriad flavours, base to tip— then your nipples, jaw, and naked belly. Salts, lemongrass and rosemary in sequence.

Until you are made yearning for every indulgence thus granted, your quivering body glutted on the unparalleled delectation of dedicated massage. It is how you would be rendered flushed, warm and erect once more, where then my fingers would find themselves welcome in the work of your hole. Steeped in fine oils imported from Tuscany, as practiced by your beloved Greeks of old: I would find myself grateful for your blindfold, for surely you would chastise me upon connecting use in the bedroom with that bespoke label upon the bottle.

Nevertheless in this matter you have been deprived an opinion, bound and silenced as you would be with your leg now lifted to one side— do you know, I would have wrestled with the decision to remove your socks when stripping you earlier? How sumptuous a sight that would have been: Oxford blue and those buckled garter belts taut about those cricketeer calves. But it is not the image I wish to craft for you this night, thus am I compelled instead to pursue my original vision.

Only once you have grown comfortable with the caress of my fingers would I then seek to replace them. Over there, in the Gladstone. I've brought you something for tonight's occasion. Smooth as polished silver, clear as purest crystal; perfectly sculpted, a hefty weight that folds the palm. I had told the shop gaffer that the design was based on a decorative table piece I'd seen in Florence: a bulbous glass work of modern sculpting art, evocative of the budding Lupine.

He needn't have known I had every intention of seeing his crafted facsimile of this flower deep inside another man.

I've done my research of course, and the measurements are exact. Each bead grows incrementally in size towards the base, where the rounding glass grows large enough to resemble the girth of an altogether more intimate form of penetration. I promised you that I would be gentle, thus would I train you to receive in this fashion. Holding your leg wide and working you open from within, bead by bead ever so gradually. Testing each thrust surely, and steadily. My lips and breath flush against the meat of your thigh as I glut myself on the sight of you yielding in whimpering sighs, acclimating each time to even greater size, even greater depth.

This sequential variation in sculpt and girth yields unfathomable pleasure to one's private senses, you must believe me. You would soon believe me, for I would hardly be able to help myself from pumping this work of finely polished crystal inside of you in whole. Slowly, then more hungrily. I can already hear the rope about your wrists twisting with newly introduced tension, see the warmth flushing your cheeks a new shade of desert rose, drink the choke of your voice through the press of my tongue against your Adam's apple.

I don't deny in that moment that I picture you as especially beautiful when at your most helpless. Aren't I a devil— I promise you freedom only to bind you right up again.

You know that I am a jealous, half-starved creature. I confess that I must have all that you are as my own.

In this portrait I would therefore seek to paint you as martyr, for I have seen your form before under the brushstroke of Guido Reni in the marble-wrought halls of Rome. Saint Sebastian, bound and suffering for the sins of other men, I would witness him now again before me. In your hands twisted above your head, torso glistening with strain, head tilted heavenward in piety. How glorious you are, dear Mycroft. Have always been. Exalted in your sacrifice, beatified by the masses— untouchable.

But a devil has one instinct when he gazes upon heaven's gates.

You must know, then, how desperately I would want to strangle you upon witnessing this picture painted of your empyrean perfection. To press my thumbs into your throat and feel your very mortal body seize, then clench with sublime terror beneath me. Oh to draw from you that final shiver of submission, Mycroft. I crave it like man craved the first fruits of heaven's garden. Because it is forbidden. Because you will never permit it otherwise: not to another soul, not in any other place.

It is the part of you I must have above all else.

In one smooth, slick motion I would slide that work of sculpted glass out from your hole again. Leaving you feeling empty, in want of more. I would soothe and offer you comfort, reassurance. All in good time, I would purr as my fingers sift through rich waves of threaded obsidian. Patience.

Only once your peace has returned and your body calmed would I would place my hand upon the column of your throat, test the give on that essential artery. Then two hands, squeezing for good measure. I could not hope to describe the thrill that would bolt through me upon feeling you first resist, then jerk and thrash beneath me. I would count the seconds, blessed as they would be, until your sweetened soul wilts into surrender and becomes mine. You know in your calming heart that in order to survive you must trust me. You must give yourself to me, for I will be not only your death but your immortal resurrection. It has been writ since ancient times: faith unrelenting is rewarded, with place eternal in the highest choirs of heaven.

I would thus return to you the gift of life.

With the release of tension about your throat would come the inevitable coughing, a choke upon your own saliva no doubt— lesser men might have begged for reprieve through the release of his gag but you are disciplined, diligent as you are utterly erudite. You would know to regain your breath through your nose. With calm, and with composure. Count to four, then out again. To four, and then out again. I would keep one hand on your throat to anchor you to the bed, to delight in the sensation of your pulse quivering against my palm. You would grow peaceful once more. Exhilarated, flushed with electric bliss, and so rendered docile beneath me.

Here then, the final stroke to this most precious canvas. Perhaps I would begin to hum as I bring the knife to rest against your naked chest— the Sicilian stiletto, a small blade really. Quite clean. Ah ah, don't move, I would instruct you. One flinch might plunge the blade deeper than intended: my calculations are exact, and trust must be absolute. Thus would I press the point high above your left breast, until skin breaks and crimson begins to spill forth. Again would I then pierce the flesh of your right flank amid the sound of your stifled whimper, the final puncture then made into the modest collection of fat gathered just beneath your navel; I see you nearly squirming with that one.

Thus would I tuck your own cotton bedsheet about the firm sculpt your stout hips, folds of white pearl shrouding sun-drenched bronze. Leaning back, my masterpiece reveals itself with unchecked majesty.

There lies before me the new Saint of England.

I recognise only then the true magnitude of my need to have you. My compulsion to ruin you, to see my seed paint your thighs and so call you mine. And I could simply do this much: I could slide between your thighs as your men of Athens once did with one another, as I did with you last time. But no. I know then what I would do, for I am wicked enough to know that I wouldn't be able to resist the summit of all sin and temptation. Observing your bound body relaxed and at ease, warm with want and thighs lain open, I would slip my hand from your throat and draw your covering sheet back again. I would lower myself between your legs, then test the spread of your hole with my thumbs; watch how delightfully it gives beneath the transgression.

Your body speaks on your behalf that you're ready for me. I would thus place my lips upon this final lock to your purity, tongue your rim and massage your perineum until you are shaking, hands wrenching upon iron and back arching from the mattress with helpless abandon. Another pleading moan muffled through the leather, I see again the bound and aching cock you so desperately beg for reprieve from.

No, Mycroft. Revel in your martyrdom.

I impart this judgement when instead of relief I grant you the press of my fingers inside, drenched in oil and offering you but more lubrication. You would begin to understand when I prop your leg upon my shoulder, widening and deepening the angle with which I can tenderly prepare you for penetration. Thin rivulets of blood trickle from your open wounds with each heave of heat-flushed breath you drag in anticipation— so riven by lust for you then I would pump your hole until my fingers glide.

Then, only then, would I apply those same oils to myself to further alleviate chance of friction. Pushing back your knees, I would therefore rest your other leg upon my other shoulder, and by that leverage lean and bend your softened frame upon itself completely. I confess, this novelty in placement might prove uncomfortable at first, but you would get used to it in time. Regardless in the moment your attention would be drawn elsewhere, as I would soon lift my cock and rest its wanting crown against your entrance.

A part of you must have known that this was coming, that this portrait concludes the narrative of this night's events to perfection. At this point in our hunt, trussed and served as you are there would be no further struggle. Only the prolonged moan of your gratification upon a slow and most deliberate entry. I would savour the act of opening you up, shiver with a profound satisfaction upon feeling your body close in around me— welcoming me in that I might wear your spent virginity like a warm sheath. You've never been entered by another man before. Your body will first seize at the novelty, but come to accept it as natural eventually. Recall my hands around your throat, the moment in which you surrendered both life and last breath to me.

This is a ritual already concluded. Remember that you have given yourself to me completely.

It is with this sentiment that I would move through you, deepen your penetration with every stroke. How good you would be for me, so patient and well behaved— it is your duty after all to oblige me. With thighs spread and your handsome body bent, you are thus made helpless and holy before me. With submission comes the beatification of final surrender, your immediate needs subjugated beneath a greater role of service. While I would liberate you from the burden of it otherwise, I cannot say that it wouldn't suit you in my bedroom. Yours, with myself attending, on this occasion.

We would find our rhythm with ease, and I would watch as this most carnal pleasure consumes you utterly. Your trial passed, I would at last undo the strip of leather that had for so long stifled your voice, desirous of hearing your first breathless syllables break that once sacred silence. The truth of the matter is that I want to hear you whine my name as I take you. I want all the staff in your house to hear you achieve that most decadent release, and know that it was me. It is another selfish wish of mine, but you're not surprised. None of my broken pledges have surprised you, neither the real version of you seated before me nor the one imagined in this fantasy.

Your fixed attention bids me continue.

And so I share that, once again, I would break the promise that I would be gentle.

For you must understand that my need for you is too great, the depths to my desire truly unbearable. With your hands still bound to the bars of your head and a strip of scarlet silk yet blinding you to your own circumstance, I would slip myself from the firming sheath of your body only to adjust your placement and position. To press your cheek into your own pristine sheets, smear your seeping blood into the mattress and slide the cushion further beneath your hips that you might present yourself as prone before me. A thought would prompt upon seeing your flexing, unmarred back; how sweetly might your skin blush beneath the warmth of a whip strike? I hear you whimper sharply in the depths of my imagination, and grow dazed with need all over again.

A thought for next time.

When I warn you that I would no longer be gentle, I mean that I would grip your hips with fingers strong enough to bruise. I mean that I would pull you up towards me with the hunger of one who has known only privation. Slide myself back inside with wicked ease, then fuck you as if you've always belonged to me. Most precious of treasures, whose plump rear I would so ravish until your bronze skin blushed with impact; how you would moan, gasp and lose yourself for me. A euphoric serenade that would only compel me only to thrust faster, fuck harder, take more and more. You must permit this starving man his frenzy, for he will bring you by hand to the cocaine heights of delirium.

Pleasures of the divine, thus shared in rhythmic cycle. I know then that I would coil myself about you— grasp your throat first, then your manhood in turn. Lay my claim upon both as I squeeze forwards, several pumps of your shaft followed by a spill of unmooring release. Your tear-stained cry of relief twinned with the very heights of elation, soaking scarlet fabric into crimson. Beautiful, heaven-sent angel of scripture. I would have to stoop to furiously kiss your cushioned cheek, smooth my hand all the way from your gentle jaw down to your panting, slickened stomach. How patient you've been with me, so giving and well-mannered in my need to indulge in the unspeakable vice.

Thus with deepest intimacy would I hold you, pleasuring myself with you for but a few strokes more until I feel myself teeter desperately towards oblivion. Overcome with obsession for you, I would pull myself from your body that I might instead spill upon your back— paint your spine with a warm and erratic signature. Collapsing then upon my side, I would muster what remains of my stamina to suck you clean, then wipe us both down. You are a fastidious, neat and tidy creature; I know you will be happier for it, when lucid once more. After managing that much, I would hold you close for a while, massage the soreness from your thighs and let you feel my warmth for you against them. I would want you to focus solely on what you feel, there and then.

The thrum of gratification ruling your body. How good it must feel to belong to me.

Once our mutual high has then in part subsided, that is when I would remove the band from your cock, release your wrists from their chafing bonds and slip the blindfold from your face— I would have missed the silver in your eyes, and so would bring your gaze back to mine. Angel of the Firmament, fallen into my misbegotten bed. How tenderly I would embrace you, murmur sonnets fated to make all the world's playwrights blush. There is no point in your care that I would overlook: in this statement lies the one promise that is absolute. My worship for you would not allow for any less than your complete rejuvenation.

So would I clean too your wounds with basin, towel and sponge; kiss the sores upon your wrists and send for hot water, then change the sheets as you bathe. At your service as such, my hands would wash your hair for you, drape your drying robe about your shoulders and hold you close until you slipped into the sweetest repose. What, until then, shall we talk about? Amid the sweet things murmured halfway to the fruition of sounder slumber lie the deepest truths to be told. Matters of the heart reveal themselves through the lens of one's unguarded self— between us would we have formed that infinite reach of trust, thinning the membrane that separates our individual selves as they exist on this Earth.

As two very mortal, human souls yet craving desperately to know the other as intimately as we know our own reflection. Speak to me of your wants, your fears and the extent of all your unrealised dreams; I would have grown just as weak in my defenses, and would speak to you of my own. The night would pass just so, beneath the spill of pearl moonlight through the partition of your bedroom curtains. A cold autumnal night kept at bay, our bodies entwined until the very stars begin to wink from existence. Until I too must in essence do so, and return to you the sanctity of your fiercely guarded privacy. Thus leaving you to wake only to the memory of pleasure run with abandon throughout every fibre of your body: if it had all been a dream conjured by your imagination, then I would leave you certain that it had been a divine one.

This is the story that I tell you, upon my knees before you in your own lamp lit study. A fantasy of my wildest dreams, years in the making before its telling this day.

My darling Mycroft Holmes, how utterly I wish to ruin you.

I reach for the bow of your soft lips, tracing the air before the scar that splits them with a tender fingertip— you sit motionless as I grasp for you, high upon your celestial throne where all the seraphim sing for you. Where and what I cannot touch lest your judgement burn me. My hand drops, you permit me instead to take up your palm.

So then do I kiss your knuckles, press your warm fingers against my face. Would you grant this sinner his final wish?

O Saint. My perfect, wretched Saint. The heavenly cruelty with which you now smile down at me.

"Engaging proposal."

You uncross your legs and lean down from your seat, cup my jaw as though I were poor Yorick clutched in the grasp of the Prince of all Denmark. In the wake of all that I have laid upon your virgin imagination, you exhibit a regent's grace and mercy.

"I have another suggestion."

5th May, 1947 Paris, France.

He had been having quite the pleasant dream, prior to this unwarranted interruption. Incidental, devoid of much deeper meaning beyond a recently arisen wanderlust— a rare and frankly exotic impulse that had been anticipated, then in turn recently met and catered to. In the waking world he was lain in a four-poster bed framed by a spill of the finest silk cushions and the plush comforts of several quilted blankets, while in that of his dreams he was stood before the southern shoreline of Sussex, watching surf water roll over his toes in a captivating spray of frothing saline.

Mycroft must have shifted in his sleep, fluttered his eyelids or else showed some sign of nearness to waking to have prompted the remark thus put his way. He therefore lurches with discomfort as his eyes snap open, his body surging upright with alertness as his locking gaze fixes upon the intruder in the room. An initial swell of urgent adrenaline quickens into gelid mortification, then morphs gradually into a gathering fury.

Buried beneath the covers beside him, a protesting hum of enquiry, as well as a lean pale arm slipping from his naked clavicle like a marionette limb with strings newly severed from the sudden motion he'd taken. A head of thinned ginger hair emerges from the pillows beside him, as James Moriarty directs his own attention towards their rather unexpected guest— terrible security for what was supposedly the finest luxury hotel in all Paris, apparently paying for the top floor suite meant nothing after the ravages of war and occupation.

But then, he supposed, this was Theo's boy. No need for him to rise to the occasion however, Mycroft has been silent long enough for him to know that all was in hand; he only needed to sit back and enjoy the show. In the spirit of this sentiment, James merely chuckles for one note beneath his breath before reaching an arm over to the bedside table next to him. Mycroft, meanwhile throws a veritable bounty of bedcovers from his person and begins to rise from the bed like a towering omen of discontent.

"Arsène Lupin." Oh, the full name. Right out of the gate. "Among your many transgressions of one's personal privacy, this would be the worst. To think you would— don't you dare."

James starts forward while a slim cigarette is already perched between his lips, dropping his matchbook and promptly spilling matches all over his lap— murmuring with furtive apology, he attempts to gather them up and swiftly plucks the cigarette from his mouth again.

Mycroft, for his part, drops his pointing finger and turns from his bedroom partner to instead round back onto M. Lupin. The thought occurs to him latterly that he was now grateful to God above that he had donned his pyjama trousers again before taking to bed, he's fairly certain on that note that James had not. Where was Sebastian? How long had M. Lupin been here? He was fond of the young man but whatever his reasons this conduct was absolutely unacceptable.

One hand planted on his cotton-hugged hip, Mycroft otherwise swings the other out to point towards the ornate set of double doors leading from the bedroom.

"You will exit this room, M. Lupin. You will depart this hotel entirely, and you will wait until an appropriate hour to conduct your business, or so help me I will haul you out by the scruff myself."