Chapter Text
The professor awakens as the first sliver of daylight begins to insinuate its way into the room through a gap in the curtains. He is still curled around Moran’s lean, warm form, his face close against the back of Moran’s head. From his lover’s stillness and the slow rise and fall of his chest he seems still asleep, even peaceful. It is perhaps a peace that will not last long, Moriarty thinks.
Moran awakens with a throbbing head and the professor still spooning around him. It is growing light in the bedroom and he winces against the relative brightness when he opens his eyes. Closing them again, he lifts a hand to his face and rubs his knuckles against his temples, trying to rub away some of the pain.
“Good morning, Sebastian,” Moriarty says behind him.
“Good morning… sir.” Moran hesitates only a moment over the ‘sir’, not from disrespect but more because despite the ache in his head he suddenly remembers all too keenly his own shabby behaviour and many of his words of the night before. ‘Professor’ is that bit less formal; a little more familiar than ‘sir’. Given what he did and said last night then, not being wholly certain if Moriarty has entirely forgiven him, to refer to him as ‘Professor’ at present would seem as wrong as referring to him as ‘James’ would.
“Head sore, is it?” Moriarty enquires.
“A little.”
“Perhaps that will teach you not to get drunk and pick fights then.” Moriarty says this without malice.
“Perhaps.” Moran puts his hand to his lip and fingers the still-tender cut there. “Sir, I…”
“Don’t.” Moriarty’s voice is low but there is still a softness in his tone. “Don’t, Sebastian,” he says close to Moran’s ear.
Moran opens his eyes and glances back at Moriarty briefly. “Don’t?”
“You are going to apologise to me again and to berate yourself for your words of last night, and for your behaviour. I say now, simply, don’t.”
“Why not?”
“It is needless. We dealt with this last night.”
Moran thinks of words uttered out of spite; of his violent urges to dominate the professor and to provoke him. “Did we truly?” He turns around to face the professor.
“Do you think I would allow you to share my bed still if we had not?” Moriarty asks. He remembers keenly, perhaps even better than Moran, how roughly the colonel took him last night, his aggression barely constrained, yet constrained it was. He remembers too that he was the one to draw Moran back, signifying his willingness to proceed, when Moran had been about to withdraw, thinking Moriarty uninterested. Had Moran been genuinely violent towards him Moriarty could not have let Moran in his bed. He might even have thrown him out the house, at least for a time, but things had not even come close to reaching the stage where such drastic measures were necessary.
He cups Moran’s cheek, running the pad of his thumb over the bruise over Moran’s eye, and he remembers how Moran sneered at him, inviting the professor to thrash him for his petulance. How easy it might have been to respond with the violence that Moran seemed to want, to punish his lover’s seeming mistrust and rebelliousness with a beating. How foolish it would have been to do so though, and he is relieved at instead how easy it was to refuse to rise to Moran’s taunting; to refuse to respond with physical abuse. “Besides…” Moriarty kisses Moran gently on his sore lips. “I was relieved that you came home. For a time I thought perhaps you might not return for days, or ever.”
Moran narrows his eyes slightly at this. “You thought I’d run away?”
“Not that you would run away, but that perhaps you would prefer to drown your sorrows in alcohol in any number of cheap pubs rather than return to me, or even…” Moriarty swallows.
“Even what?”
“I suppose there was a moment or two where I came to wonder if my next sight of you might not be of your body lying in a mortuary somewhere.”
Moran manages a wry laugh at this. “I weren’t gonna off myself, sir.”
“I don’t mean suicide, I mean… you drunk, mingling with some very violent, ruthless people; brawling with them, or even simply you walking out in front of a cab or suchlike in your drunken state. You came back merely with a black eye and a split lip but it could have ended very differently for you.”
“I can look after myself.”
“I am perfectly aware that you can, yet frequently you seem not to actually trouble to do so.” Moriarty says this tersely, his cheeks colouring slightly as realises the vehemence of his own tone. He turns his face away. “You must see, Sebastian,” he says more softly, “that I could never grieve over a man like Beyer. His death was unfortunate and an inconvenience, certainly, but I can summon no real sorrow over his loss. Aside from serving a useful purpose to me occasionally he meant nothing to me. You though…I would gladly sacrifice a hundred men like Beyer – a thousand even – if that meant I would save you.”
Moran drops his gaze and for some seconds makes no other response to this. He knows that Moriarty is a man not prone to the use of hyperbole and though lies may easily trip off his tongue at times, it is with other people that he may use falsehoods to manipulate them. With Moran though he has been peculiarly truthful all along. Perhaps at first this was only because he needed Moran’s skills and thus he grasped simply that Moran had to be told the truth of certain matters for their working relationship to function. But, later, as the pair began to confide in each other about issues of a far more personal nature, even though there remained much that Moriarty concealed from Moran, still when the professor did speak to Moran he tended to tell the colonel the truth of the matter rather than resorting to subterfuge to placate him.
For the professor to utter such words to him then, either this signals that he has changed his tactics suddenly or he truly means this.
“Professor.” Now Moran’s cheeks flush and he buries his face against the professor’s shoulder in an attempt to conceal this. “James…” There is a second or two where he might make some direct response to Moriarty’s words, but he cannot. “Would you…” He lifts his face after a moment to look questioningly at Moriarty. “Would you think me foolish for wanting to go to Beyer’s funeral?”
“No, I would not. You must do what you think apt.”
“The money for his wife and little ones...”
“Will be arranged.”
“Right.” Moran's gaze drifts away again, and Moriarty suspects his thoughts are not good ones.
“Sebastian,” he says. “You understand that your actions always have consequences.”
“Sir?”
“Your seeking to challenge me last night, to provoke me, to dominate me, even...” Moriarty slips his hand under Moran's chin, along the edge of his jaw, turning Moran's face up. “There will of course be consequences because of that.” He sees the delicious puzzlement in his lover's eyes.
“But you said... I need not apologise any more.”
“And you need not. This is not about making amends, my dove, this is about setting things back in balance – ensuring that you properly remember your place once again. I very much enjoy allowing you to take control from time to time but you are well aware that that is only a temporary state of being.”
Moran's eyes widen slightly, though only enough to indicate he is no longer quite so perplexed by the professor's words, no more. “You are speaking of...” He hesitates, unwittingly running the tip of his tongue across his lower lip. Is that hesitancy born of fear, or uncertain anticipation, Moriarty wonders. “Punishment?”
“Not punishment, my boy. Discipline.”
“Is there a difference?”
“Of course.” Moriarty smiles.
“What kind of discipline?”
Moriarty trails the tip of his finger down Moran's neck, down his shoulder. “Whatever I see fit.”
Moran dips his head down slightly. “When?” he asks.
“Whenever I think it best.”
“I am not to know anything then?”
“Would you prefer to know?”
Moran shakes his head slowly. “No sir. I trust you.”
“You trust me,” Moriarty says softly, running his fingers back up Moran's shoulder, up his neck. He gently brushes the pad of his thumb across Moran's split lip. “But also...” He leans in closer, dropping his voice. “The thought of my dominance over you, of being entirely at my mercy, unknowing what form your discipline is to take up until the very moment I inflict it upon you, does that not thrill you, hmm?”
Moran shivers, despite the relative warmth of the room. He is aware, even when such words are never spoken, that were he to refuse to participate in this then the professor would accept his refusal without a word of blame or mockery. But he knows also how much he would forever regret passing such an opportunity by.
He looks Moriarty in the eyes again. “Yes sir,” he says.