Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/4469489.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Underage
  Category:
      M/M
  Fandom:
      僕のヒーローアカデミア_|_Boku_no_Hero_Academia_|_My_Hero_Academia
  Relationship:
      Bakugou_Katsuki/Kirishima_Eijirou, Kirishima_Eijirou/Bakugou_Katsuki
  Character:
      Bakugou_Katsuki, Kirishima_Eijirou
  Additional Tags:
      Smut, a_lot_of_sexy_times, and_frottage, because_there_is_too_much
      penetrative_sex_out_there, do_you_guys_even_know_the_consequences_of
      coming_up_in_someones_rectum, their_tummy_becomes_upset_and_loose_and
      they_have_to_poop_a_lot, not_sexy_if_you_ask_me, i_mean_maybe_YOU_are
      into_poop_sex_and_thats_fine_but_im_not, you_can_enjoy_your_poop_porn_as
      much_as_you_want_im_not_judging_you_trust_me, i_of_all_people_shuld_not
      be_judging_others_based_on_what_fetishes_they_have, im_very_aware_that_i
      am_not_using_the_tags_correctly, i_am_from_tumblr_so_i_am_used_to
      commenting_in_the_tags, not_sorry, bakushima
  Stats:
      Published: 2015-08-25 Completed: 2015-09-13 Chapters: 2/2 Words: 7812
****** Heavy petting ******
by ImmaEatUrYaoi_(orphan_account)
Summary
     Kiripie and Bakagou does the sex at each other. Shameless, pointless,
     baseless smut.
Notes
     So, ehhhh, I decided that since I couldn't get rid of Bakushimaniosis
     even after writing a 6000 word fic, I figured I'd wrote another fic.
     Will I be less obsessed after writing this? Probably not, honestly,
     but fuck that let's just get to it.
     Rated Explicit, because this is porn (slightly better plot and acting
     though lmao) and Kacchan has the pottiest potty mouth of all potty
     mouths. And I guess it's underage... They are like, what? 15 or
     something. They are legal where I live (I live in Denmark), but they
     wouldn't be in, idk, America? Ah, whatever, I'll rate it underage.
***** Chapter 1 *****
"Stop that, you're starting to piss me off."
Kirishima smiled at the blonde. He had sat and poked Bakugou's shoulder for the
last five minutes or so, all while the grump had been sitting and playing some
random console game. He actually had wanted to ask Bakugou if he wanted to do
something else than lay around and do nothing like they currently did, but
Bakugou didn't bother to answer. Either that or he was too deep into the game
to focus on anything else.
... Which was probably the case, as Bakugou was currently trying to beat the
final boss of a dungeon, and it looked like something that craved for the
concentration that of a sage or something.
"You wont answer me when I call out to you, so I'm trying to make sure you know
that I am still here and that I want something." Kirishima said, and rolled
over on the giant bed they were sitting in. He loved lying on Bakugou's bed; it
was like floating in a cloud while getting a massage or something. It was so
soft and comfortable.
"I am busy with fucking up this ass tart over here, okay? Tell me what you want
after I fuCK YOU, I WILL SLIT THE THROAT OF YOUR WIFE WHILE YOUR CHILDREN
WATCH!!!" Bakugou almost looked like he could have tackled the TV the moment
the boss rammed into his character with full frontal force.
"After you beat him or after you die? Because I don't think I want to wait for
you to finally kill him." Kirishima declared.
"Shut your fuck, you can try beat him if you're so sure of yourself, you
fucking cunt BASTARD WHY DO YOU KEEP DOING THAT?!!" The boss repeated it's last
attack and cut the health of Bakugou's character down to almost zero. Kirishima
started to giggle and Bakugou kept on swearing.
Somehow, Bakugou managed to stay alive, even after he ran out of potions. He
didn't manage to play it without spilling curse after curse after curse, even
after he was poisoned twice by the small fry loitering around in the stage.
Kirishima was, on the other hand, starting to get really bored. Bakugou had no
split screen two player games, so they had just been sharing the controller
from time to time. After Bakugou had decided that Kirishima was awful at the
current game, he had refused to let Kirishima get the controller, which the
said red head didn't really mind; watching Bakugou fall off edges and witness
enemies glitching and spasm while stuck in the ground was kind of hilarious.
But after wathcing this stretched out battle against this boss, Kirishima
started to feel kind of left out.
So he decided he would punish Bakugou somehow. He had to do something subtle
and/or goodhearted, and if he could, he would avoid something that would be
annoying, but as he wrecked his brain, nothing he could think of matched such a
description. Poking Bakugou again would be annoying as fuck, and he would risk
that the ash blonde would actually snap at him. Singing, maybe? He knew what
songs Bakugou hated, so maybe that would be funny. Or...
Kirishima thought it was a good idea, at least he thoght so until he actually
did it.
Subtly and carefully, he crawled up behind Bakugou, who was still yelling at
the boss on the screen, and in something that was probably only a matter of
seconds, he latched onto Bakugou, locking al his limbs around the other boy's
torso.
"KIRISHIMA YOU FUCKNUGGET WHAT ARE YOU DOING LOOK AT WHAT HAPPENED NOW I DIED
LOOK WHAT YOU DID, LOOK!!" Bakugou immediately started screaming at Kirishima,
and it had barely been a moment before the angry teen threw himself backwards,
now lying on Kirishima, trying to free himself from the death lock the red head
had successfully caught him in.
"Notice me, Bakugou-senpai~!" Kirishima giggled, but his laughing abruptly
ceased when Bakugou managed to writhe free of the four-limb-lock and thereafter
tackled him into the mattress. For probably 10 minutes they wrestled in
Bakugou's heavenly soft bed, giggling and laughing like kids and sometimes
swearing when they accidentally got nudged a little too hard.
"Hah! I win!"
Eventually, Kirishima had to see himself defeated, when Bakugou got a hold of
his wrists and pushed them into the bed sheets with his knee on Kirishima's
chest. Kirishima was still laughing, although it was slightly troublesome with
the weight of Bakugou on his ribs and all.
"I surrender! I surrender! The great lord Bakugou wins!" He laughed, almost out
of air to speak with.
The knee removed itself, but it was replaced by Bakugou's head and torso, as
the ash blonde lazily slumped down onto Kirishima. He was still holding
Kirishima's wrist, but not as hard as before.
"'m tired, Hairy." It seemed as Bakugou had suddenly run out of energy after
their wrestling match. Either that, or he had suddenly realized that he had
left Kirishima out on the fun and felt guilty. Or something.
"Sleep?" Kirishima asked. It wouldn't be the first time those two would lie in
a bunch and sleep like that. Kirishima wasn't sure why Bakugou let him be that
close while he was in such a vulnerable state as 'sleeping', but he enjoyed
doing it. It was awfully comfortable for him to be within Bakugou's personal
space, and he also felt awfully comfortable when Bakugou invaded his personal
space. Well, Kirishima was a hug-person rather than a handshake-person, so it
probably explained why he felt that way. He had no clue how the usually hostile
and aggressive Bakugou Katsuki was okay with physical touch, since he didn't
seem like a type that allowed people to come too near him. Either way, he
wouldn't complain about it.
"Noooo... Not sleepy."
"You just said you were tired."
"I said I was tired, not sleepy."
"Did you mean bored? Or is tired a whole third meaning in your country?"
"We are from the same country, Hair-for-brains."
"I'm not from Bakuland, where you, lord Bakugou, the ruler of all Baku's..."
"Shut your face, I meant bored, not sleepy."
"Then, do you wanna go outside?"
"Nnnooooo... too much work."
"Well, shit, I don't know what else we should do."
Then they lied in a lazy heap for maybe three more quiet minutes, listening to
each other's breath, until Bakugou sat up, straddling Kirishima. The look on
his face was a little weird and unfamiliar to the red head. Kirishima started
to wonder what the guy was thinking, until Bakugou's face started to darken a
little. Well, actually it didn't darken as much as it lit up in an alarming
red.
"... um... Bakubro? You okay, dude?"
Bakugou didn't answer, but instead he looked away and scratched his neck. His
eyes seemed to flicker around in the room, and it was obvious that he wanted to
say something.
"Um... Kirishima..." Bakugou had spoken so softly that it took Kirishima a
little more than it should have to register that it was indeed the blonde who
spoke. Usually, everything he said came out dripping with confidence and
bravado, but just now there had been a hesitation, an insecurity. When he
thought about it, Kirishima had never really experienced such a thing from
Bakugou's side, so it made him very, very curious as to what Bakugou was going
to say.
It was probably visible to Bakugou that Kirishima sensed the difference,
because for a second he looked at the red head with an expression of a kid that
had been busted in a lie, though it was quickly replaced with irritation.
"Whatever man...!" The other said, crossing his arms, trying to signal that
whatever he was about to say wasn't important. It was too late for that,
though; Kirishima was already too curious.
"Wait, wait, what? You wanna say something, don't you?" He said, propping
himself up onto his elbows.
"It wasn't important, idiot, just forget it...!"
"Nothing we talk about is important, Blasty, c'mon, spit it out."
"Shuttup, mind your own business!"
"Bakugouuuuu..."
Kirishima started to do the puppy eyes thing that he knew Bakugou despised. It
always worked.
"The fuck you-- Stop that shit, Hairy, it's not going to work!" That was the
words Bakugou said, but they didn't match his behaviour or facial expression.
That was a sign that it was working.
Kirishima cranked the puppy eyes up on eleven and dragged the collar of his t-
shirt up above his mouth and nose, blinking repeatedly. He was luckily the one
being sat on by Bakugou, so at this point, Bakugou should give in in a matter
of moments...
"Fine, fuck you, I wanted to ask if you've ever done it with someone before!"
Bakugou said, looking away with cheeks that were shaded in pink. Kirishima
laughed at him, but only briefly.
"Is that it? What's with you today?" Kirishima asked, playfully tugging the hem
of Bakugou's shirt. He always thought that Bakugou would be able to talk about
things like those openly.
"Nothing's wrong, why don't you just answer, you fucking dweeb...!" Bakugou
hissed, and it sounded more of a command than of a question.
"Alright, alright... I'm assuming that you mean 'sex' when you say 'it', okay?"
Bakugou looked like he was about to answer to that remark, but Kirishima was
faster.
"Which I haven't, by the way. I'm still an innocent, little virgin~!" He sung,
trying not to laugh at Bakugou's disdainful expression.
"Like fuck you're innocent, you shitmunch. Are you telling the truth?" Bakugou
said, though a little more softly than normally.
"I am, dude. Why are you asking?" It probably caught the blonde off guard when
Kirishima went ahead and asked, because he looked mortified for a second or two
before his whole face turned red.
"'m just asking, y'know..." He mumbled. Kirishima wasn't really able to read
Bakugou at that moment. His behaviour was mysterious, suspicious, even. It only
fuelled his curiosity further rather than making him want to drop the topic.
"... Have you done it, perhaps?"
Bakugou made a weird, startled sound. It was a new thing for Kirishima to
experience all this, but it was certainly not boring.
"Well, no, I was just curious if you had! I mean, so... maybe you could..."
Bakugou's voice started to drift off, and he looked the other way once again.
"... so I could tell you about how it feels, right?" It was only silent for
about 2 seconds, before Bakugou answered, his voice a little louder than it
should have been.
"Yeah, but since you don't know it's fine, alright? We're both virgins, none of
us knows, the end." He said, immediately toppling over to lie down on the bed,
one leg still resting over Kirishima's body. Kirishima was not intending to let
it all end there, though.
"I've heard it feels like jacking off, but a million times better, or
something." He said and started to play with some of his hair. Bakugou didn't
answer to that, but he kept looking at Kirishima in such a weird way that the
red head just had to know what he was thinking.
"Bakugou..." He said, but a little softly.
"... mh."
Kirishima paused. He might as well say it. Bakugou would probably tell him what
he was thinking somehow if Kirishima told him his own thoughts. That's how it
had worked between them up until that moment, at least.
"I think... I..." Kirishima could practically taste the curiosity emerging from
Bakugou. He might as well say it.
"I don't think I'd mind to do it with you."
It was like time paused for a few moments. It was quite silent in the room
while the two teens stared at each other. Kirishima felt a tug of regret for a
second or two, but he decided what was done was done. Besides, he had just
thrown out the truth anyway. He hated to keep secrets from people, and
especially someone like Bakugou, who was someone he considered close.
The tiny seed of nervousness that had started to grow in his stomach quickly
wilted when he saw Bakugou's reaction: the blonde had started to blush, and
quite hard, even. It took less than half a minute for his face to look like a
bright, red traffic light, before he covered his face and rolled over, back to
Kirishima. The said red head found this to be very, very, very interesting.
Quite interesting, actually. He sat up and tried to glance over Bakugou's
shoulder to see his face. It was hard, because the blonde had curled up into a
ball, hands still on face. Kirishima grabbed Bakugou's shoulder, and of some
reason he couldn't stop smiling.
"Did that really fluster you this much?" He laughed, leaning over some more,
trying to get a view of Bakugou's face.
"Shut your face, why did you go say something like that..." Bakugou's voice was
a strained whisper, almost a hiss, and it came out pretty aggressively, too.
But it was so hard for Kirishima to feel threatened; Bakugou's ears had started
to become covered in blush, and it was so... so cute.
And it was weird, because Bakugou was not really the type you could call
"cute".
"I didn't think you'd be such a virgin!" The red head kept laughing, mostly of
how easy it was to fluster the usually so brash, bold and confident blonde. He
thought that he might as well push it a little further.
"It's not-- Virgin?? S-shut your f-fuck-- h-hey, what--" Bakugou's stuttering
halted when Kirishima practically draped his torso across Bakugou and placed
his mouth beside his ear and breathed in it.
"W-what are y-y-you doing, you fuck...!?" Bakugou's voice had suddenly adopted
a high pitch and it was shaking slightly. Kirishima wanted to laugh quite a lot
at that point, but it would probably ruin the moment and what he was about to
say.
 
"You wanna do it with me, don't you?"
 
Bakugou's whole body froze, muscles tensing up. Kirishima wished so intently
that he could have seen Bakugou's facial expression, but those hands were in
the way. He was just about to give in to the silence and laugh out loud, but
Bakugou sat up straight, startling Kirishima in the process. From Kirishima's
angle, he could make out the still red ears and some of Bakugou's surprisingly
long eyelashes, but the facial expression was out of sight. Kirishima leaned a
little to see more of Bakugou's face. He wanted to know what the other was
thinking, and he wanted to know it really badly.
"Baku--"
"Lezdoit."
Kirishima was cut off before he could even start the question. It was silent
for a few seconds, before he responded.
"What?"
It took ages before Bakugou answered, and this time it was understandable.
"I said, um. Let's do it. You and me."
It was baffling, hearing those words from Bakugou's mouth. Hearing it.
Kirishima had to make sure at least twice that it wasn't a dream or something.
"Do it? As in...?" He said. He knew what Bakugou was talking about; he just
really wanted Bakugou to say it out loud.
"As in~~? Waaah~! What do you think, Hair-for-brains? I'm saying you and me
should do the do together, right now, that's what I'm saying!" Bakugou snapped,
whirling his head to glare at Kirishima. Maybe Kirishima would have felt
offended at some point if Bakugou's face hadn't been entirely tomato red and if
the bad imitation of the red head hadn't made a bubbly laughter force itself
out of his throat.
"What are you laughing at, you fuck? I'm trying to... to... I don't know what
the hell I'm doing...!" The blonde turned his face away, looking discouraged
(another thing Kirishima hadn't seen before). Kirishima thought for a couple of
moments, studying the back of the other teen, before deciding what to do. Then
he stood up from the bed and headed over to the jacket he had thrown on the
floor several hours earlier. He could feel Bakugou looking at his back as he
kneeled down to fish out his phone and he could see that Bakugou was looking at
him with a curious but confused face when he turned around to walk back and sit
on the edge of the mattress again.
When Bakugou just looked at him with an arched eyebrow while the phone dangled
from Kirishima's hands, Kirishima sighed and started to dial the screen code.
"Dude... I am not making a fucking sex tape with you, especially not when this
is going to be my first time." Bakugou said. Kirishima sighed again.
"Well, that was not what I had in mind, but if you really want to..."
"No, no, no, forget what I said, whatever, what are we using the phone for all
of a sudden?"
Kirishima tapped on the screen, writing search words into the search field of a
browser while he felt the mattress bounce as Bakugou crawled up beside him on
all fours to take a look. The expression on his face quickly told what he was
thinking.
"Dude...!"
"What, you mean you know about anal sex and all that even though you're a
virgin?"
"But gay porn?"
"... what's wrong with that? We could learn something..."
"It's porn, Hairy, we can't learn anything from it."
"Well, what do you suggest we do then? Go to the book store and buy a book?
'Um, excuse me, ma'am, I want the newest, most updated guide for steamy,
slippery anal gay sex, do you have one of those?'" Kirishima got a hand on his
entire face for that one.
"No, you ass rag. You can just read those guides on the internet. Gimme the
phone." Bakugou said and made grabby hands in the direction of the said device.
Kirishima pouted as he gave the phone, wondering why Bakugou suddenly felt
confident again all of a sudden. If he didn't know better, he'd think the guy
had liquid bravado in his blood.
 
===============================================================================
 
 
 "Well. This changes things."
That was probably the third time Kirishima had said that. They had discovered
so much the past two hours, it was overwhelming. Several hundreds of guides on
how to be a better bottom, what lube to use, what toys to have, what kind of
preparation it took, and worst of all, the patience.
The sun had pretty much dived under the horizon and it was dark outside.
Bakugou had at some point walked over to draw the curtains, thought not without
tripping over some wires from his console. He didn't get hurt, and both his
console and games were fine, but that didn't mean Kirishima would escape a
serenade of artful and creative curses.
"They are pretty much saying that if you wanna ram someone else in the ass, you
need to prepare... for weeks... and even then it might not be safe or
enjoyable..." Kirishima said, slightly disappointed. Bakugou hissed another
variation of "fuck".
"Alright, is that it, then? If you're two guys you can't stick your penis up
unless you make it a fucking project? Fuck this, man. I am so fucking done
right now. First the game and now all this. Fuck gay sex, man." Bakugou tossed
the phone over his shoulder, and Kirishima only barely grabbed it before it
fell down onto the wooden floor.
"So what do we do now?"
"We can't do anything! Unless we wanna use this time to prepare and all that
stupid shit, which I don't really feel like doing, like, what the fuck."
Kirishima tried to come up with something to say as Bakugou kept complaining in
the background.
And then it hit him.
He started to passionately tap on the touch screen, which apparently made
enough noise to break Bakugou out of his whine train.
"Didn't I say that porn videos have the same educational value as art's and
crafts class in 3rd grade? Like, dude, come on..."
"I'm not searching for porn videos, Baku, I'm searching for some different
guides." Apparently this got Bakugou's attention. The blonde immediately
crawled over to look at the search results and when he finally read the words
in the search field he slowly looked up, facing the red head.
"Oh."
"Yea."
 It didn't take them very long to agree that this was a way better idea, and it
took them even less time to understand the concepts, tricks and etc. of this
thing they had just found, but probably should have known about for a long
time:
 
Frottage.
 
 
***** Chapter 2 *****
Chapter Summary
     Literally the only thing everyone has been waiting for.
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
They were pretty much ready, and they had been for a good 10 minutes. Problem
was...
 
None of them wanted to make the first move.
 
So.
 
They just sat there.
 
 
Until Bakugou started to complain.
"Why are you chickening out, dude?!"
"I thought you wanted to... you know. Be dominant or whatever." Kirishima
mumbled. He definitely thought Bakugou was that type of guy.
"B-bu, well, I-I'm still a freaking virgin?? Never had sex before?? I thought I
told you and shit???"
"Foreplay isn't really sex, though..."
"F-f... well... I don't... know how... to..." Bakugou's words faded into a
mumble, and the insecurity was back on his face.
"Dude, have you never made out before?" Apparently it was true, because the
blonde before him flinched and looked at him with a face that screamed "uh-oh,
busted". Kirishima just laughed briefly at it and decided that he'd give the
poor Bakubro a hand.
On his crotch.
Bakugou's reaction was pretty funny, though. He uttered this high pitched whine
with wide eyes and he looked like he could have keeled over of bare surprise.
"DUDE WHAT THE FUCK"
"Well, you didn't want to start, so now I am. Relax, for god's sa--" Kirishima
cut himself off when he realized that his palm wasn't touching something soft.
He glanced down at Bakugou's crotch before he started to smile ever so
slightly.
"... You were already this hard, Bakugou?" He purred. Of some reason that just
seemed extremely funny to him.
"..." Bakugou were silently gaping as an answer. Looks like it had been the
case. Kirishima figured he might as well. Maybe it'd help if he just went ahead
and started.
He felt Bakugou start ever so slightly when he placed his mouth on the blonde's
neck. He carefully started to palm the little tent in Bakugou's pants and began
to press small pecks all around Bakugou's neck, from the collarbone all the way
up to the jawline, and then up behind the ear, where he gently nipped on the
ear flip. Kirishima’s heart had begun to race, slamming itself against his
ribs, and his cheeks had started to burn intensely. He was almost sure they
were just as red as his hair at that point.
He was surprised to feel a hand sneak its way around his waist and down towards
his butt. Well, on the other hand, he wasn't. Bakugou probably recovered very
fast from insecurity and embarrassment.
"Crawl a little closer, would you. I can't fucking reach." Bakugou mumbled
softly. Huh, he was still embarrassed, but there was no insecurity in his
voice. Kirishima did as the blonde wanted and went closer, and he felt
Bakugou's hand cupping a feel. Kirishima gave Bakugou a little squeeze that
made the other's breath hitch, before he left a trail of kisses that led up the
corner of Bakugou's mouth. The red head then figured he might as well tease the
other and started to gently lick the lips of the blonde. Bakugou hadn't closed
his eyes, he just looked the other way instead, his brows furrowed into funny
shapes. Kirishima thought it was so cute; Bakugou displaying things like
embarrassment made him want to hug the other, but he refrained from doing so.
It'd just ruin the moment.
He was again pleasantly surprised by Bakugou leaning in and kissing him, full
on with lip on lip, and it didn't take any more than a few seconds before a
tongue slipped inside Kirishima's mouth and started to search around, caressing
his teeth, the roof of his mouth, his own tongue. He wanted to close his eyes,
but of some reason, the look of Bakugou kissing him with his eyes shut kept him
from doing it. He felt Bakugou get harder under the layers of fabric and the
hand that had been on Kirishima’s butt so far had begun to writhe its way down
into his pants.
He suddenly got an idea.
Indeed, Bakugou's whole body gave a startled twitch when Kirishima moaned
softly into the kiss. This was probably going to be really funny.
Now, Kirishima hadn’t actually had sex ever in his entire life, but what he had
done before was making out, and everyone he had ever made out with before (they
were, like what, 5 people in total?) had always ended the session with
something along the lines of “God, you’re so good at kissing, Eijirou.”, and
yes, Kirishima was quite proud of that. He wasn’t really the type to brag, so
there was probably a limited number of people who actually knew it.
Now he wanted Bakugou to know it. And God, would that grump get to know it.
He got a sharp gasp out of Bakugou when Kirishima grazed his teeth along the
velvety skin under Bakugou’s chin. He liked the reaction so much, and licked
the same spot, just once. Bakugou didn’t gasp, but his breath definitely became
a tiny bit erratic. Kirishima figured it was a sweet spot, and he was so pumped
up to find more of them, when Bakugou suddenly slid his hand further up and
away from Kirishima’s butt, and laid himself on his back, sighing as he hit the
mattress. Kirishima had to process for a little too long, because he just
realized that Bakugou literally just laid himself out in front of him. Like
some waiter had just went up to him and placed a meal on a table. Bakugou was
literally the most vulnerable at that moment and it stirred something up in
Kirishima that felt amazing. He unwillingly started to smile, and he was so
sure that it was a goofy, stupid smile that was plastered on his face, and he
wondered if he should have tried to hide it, but Bakugou was quicker than he
was.
“The hell is so funny, shithead? It’s my first time, stop laughing…!” Bakugou
growled, his face turning completely scarlet.
“Nothing, I wasn’t laughing, at all! I just…” Kirishima’s words trailed off, or
more, he ran out of words. Or stopped himself, maybe? From saying something
absurd, probably.
“Just what? This is a prank, isn’t it? You’ve planned this or something--“ This
time Kirishima laughed, cutting off Bakugou mid-sentence.
“Jesus, you’re really nervous, aren’t you?” He giggled. Bakugou sent him a sour
glare, but no insult came. Instead, he just turned his face away, eyes starting
to dance again, hopping from spot to spot in the room. Kirishima took the
silence as an invitation, leaned closer, and kissed the temple of the other. He
removed his hand from Bakugou’s groin, and gently caressed his cheek before
kissing his temple again, then moving his mouth down to another lip-on-lip
kiss, though not without (probably deliberately) brushing his eyelashes against
Bakugou’s nose bridge. When Kirishima started to whirl his tongue around in
Bakugou’s mouth, he got a little annoyed by the lack of response. Right now, he
was doing all the work. As much as Kirishima liked seeing Bakugou this passive
for once, he’d rather want them to fight for dominance, or something. At least
he wanted Bakugou to join him more.
He thought hard about what to do while kissing the other, trying to encourage
some response. Kirishima then decided that he’d go for it.
When he separated his mouth from Bakugou’s with a wet smack, the blonde looked
a tiny bit surprised. Kirishima took a second to enjoy the look of Bakugou with
slightly wet and red lips, before he, without any sort of warning, shoves his
hands into Bakugou’s shirt and drags it up over his chest.
“Wha-- HEY THE FUCK” Bakugou would probably had cussed him out if Kirishima
hadn’t placed an openmouthed kiss onto his left pec, almost right on top of the
nipple. Kirishima could immediately feel the skin his lips touched become rough
with goose bumps. He took a moment to help himself and get a good, long look at
what he could see.
“The hell’s wrong with you, you fuck!” Bakugou hissed, no, growled it out, but
Kirishima just couldn’t take him seriously, not when the blonde had his shirt
pulled up to his collar bones, with slightly more unruly hair and with that red
tint on his entire face, and especially not with the expression he was making;
his lips slightly parted, his teeth clenched tightly together, his brows
clenched into a mix of embarrassment and anger, and his feisty, orange eyes
wide of surprise.
“… You’re really cute, you know.”
“Wha…” Bakugou looked so offended by that remark, it looked like he’d almost
make a double chin the way he retracted his head.
“Say that one more time, you shit eating ass monkey, I fucking dare y--“ If
there was one thing Kirishima was going to do from now it, it was stopping
Bakugou in the middle of a sentence, because the sheer look on the face of the
blonde was so utterly amusing, it was on the edge of addicting. Kirishima
couldn’t resist the urge to blow air onto the pale skin and create a long,
dragged-out fart sound. The look on Bakugou’s face was too much for him, and he
tried to contain his laughter, which came out like a strained giggle.
“You’re a fucking pile of shit, do you know this?” Kirishima’s answer was a
less restrained laughter towards Bakugou’s chest.
“Then instead of just lying there and letting me do whatever I want without
letting me know what you’d like, what about you tried… you know…” Kirishima
gestured briefly with his right hand from his half-lying position. A raised
eyebrow from the blonde before him told Kirishima that his statement had been a
little broad.
“… Um…?”
“Like, you could either tell me what you like and what you don’t like, or you
could… Hmm, how do I say it... we could switch our positions.”
Bakugou looked slightly hesitant, though the way he maintained eye contact with
Kirishima indicated that he was thinking about it.
“ ’cus the way you are now, being all passive and limp (y’know, in other places
than your dick), it’s kinda not fun for me when I get no response.” The redhead
added, running the flat of his thumb over Bakugou’s navel. To Kirishima it
really looked like Bakugou had some inner debate whether he should try do what
Kirishima said or not, and it intrigued the redhead, because he was always so
very interested in what Bakugou was thinking.
“Uh… I think…” Just as Kirishima thought about asking, Bakugou started to talk,
though his voice somewhat quiet.
“Hmmmm?” Kirishima hummed. He probably looked excessively excited, but as for
right now, he didn’t exactly think he cared
“Um, like… I think I’d want to switch, for now at least…” Kirishima almost
unleashed a whine, because the way the sentence ended in a shy mumble and
averted eyes just made Bakugou look so uncharacteristically cute. He had to,
just had to…
“Cut that shit out right now or I will murder your sorry ass…” Bakugou snarled
this as Kirishima pinched both his cheeks while a stupid smile tattooed itself
to his face.
“Okay, okay, but you are just so adorable, I had to...” Kirishima said,
completely aware that it’d piss Bakugou off to be called “cute” and any synonym
to it.
“You’re the one with the puppy-eyes, you sack of semen…!”
Kirishima just smiled even more, rolled over, laid himself in a stereotypic
“seductive porn star”-position (draw me like one of your French girls), and
looked over at Bakugou, his smirk not even fading from his face.
“Come get me, Blasty~!”
Even though that statement was replied to with a cringe and a glare, the blonde
teen immediately crawled over Kirishima (though only after he dragged the hem
of his shirt down again), his hands on either side of the other’s head. Then,
seemingly trying to rid himself of any hesitation, he practically dived right
into a full-on kiss, though with a little too much force and ended up crashing
their teeth together through their lips. Although it obviously hurt him,
Bakugou didn’t stop, but carried on and proceeded to slip his tongue past the
soft barrier consisting of Kirishima’s lips.
It was so obvious that Bakugou tried to force himself to not give into the
nervousness; his movements where jittery and slightly stiff, and Kirishima
could actually hear the faint sound of a frantic heartbeat coming from
Bakugou’s chest. Deciding he’d do whatever it took to calm Bakugou down
(despite the love he had gained for the flustered version of the blonde), he
snaked one arm around Bakugou’s neck, starting to gently massage the nape with
his thumb. Angling his groin, he slowly gyrated his hips, momentarily pressing
the now visible bulge in his pants up between Bakugou’s legs.
A soft moan, almost just puff of air, forced itself through the mouth of
Bakugou, and God, did it do things to Kirishima. He couldn’t wait to hear more
audible versions of that.
He couldn’t help but let out a slightly disappointed sigh when Bakugou broke
the kiss, but he stayed put. He would only respond when Bakugou took action.
Okay, maybe he was currently slipping his free arm up into Bakugou’s shirt even
though said teen hadn’t done anything apart from the kiss yet, but that was
beside the point, actually. What mattered was how Kirishima could feel how
Bakugou became less nervous, though only little by little. He had dared to copy
Kirishima’s move by moving his hand up under the redhead’s shirt, though he
stopped midway through, hesitating, before sliding it up a little more and
squeezing ever so tightly on the firm muscle underneath. Kirishima, on the
other hand, lead his hand onto the back of Bakugou, running his palm over the
bumps and valleys Bakugou’s toned muscles formed. Kirishima was just on the way
to graze his groin against Bakugou’s again, but was cut short by Bakugou
thrusting his hips downwards, creating friction more intense than what they had
done up until that point. It took Kirishima off guard, and he moaned with his
eyes lightly closed. It seemed as Bakugou had immediately taken a liking to
Kirishima’s moan, because he thrust again, this time a little harder, but less
clumsily. Kirishima figured it’d give the grump more courage to do things, so
he didn’t strain himself, happily placing his mouth towards Bakugou’s shoulder
and moaned once again.
“…Shit…” Bakugou mumbled with his lips towards Kirishima’s neck. A third thrust
ground another moan out of Kirishima, but this time a lot softer one. The
redhead lost himself a little for a second, before returning the movement with
a small, shallow thrust on his own. After a brief pause, Bakugou lowered his
whole lower body, placing his crotch right on top of Kirishima’s, before
starting to repeatedly hump in small movements. Their erections ground towards
the fabric of their pants, dragging out heavy sighs and slightly strained
moans, which softly hung in the otherwise silent room. As Bakugou’s humping
grew more desperate and gained in strength, the bed rocked, creaking softly as
an addition to the heavy breathing they emitted. They adjusted their positions
from time to time, sometimes causing a break in the otherwise steady rhythm.
Kirishima ended up spreading his legs, letting Bakugou grind himself towards
his lap, and at some point, he wasn’t sure when, Bakugou had taken a hold of
his wrists and pushed them into the mattress, panting through his teeth towards
Kirishima’s ear. It was, overall, very comfortable and enjoyable for Kirishima.
He didn’t have to move a lot, and he was lying in the divine softness of
Bakugou’s bed. Moreover, having the said blonde teen hump him through both
their pants on the same time? Christ have mercy.
Kirishima wanted to turn his head to get another kiss, but then Bakugou stopped
thrusting and sat up, looking at Kirishima with his hands on the redhead’s
knees.
“What’s up?” Kirishima asked. Bakugou looked away for the umpteenth time that
day, before responding.
“I think this is… where we could… yea …,” He murmured.
“Get naked?” Kirishima said, sounding a little more excited than he should
have.
“Um, yes… that.” Bakugou said. He grabbed the hem of his shirt and was about to
wring it off, when Kirishima’s hands suddenly shoot over and took hold of the
fabric and started to pull it up, making sure his thumbs slid along Bakugou’s
pale skin as he pulled it up.
“I can undress on my own, shit-hair…” Bakugou snarled, but he didn’t resist and
let the redhead take his shirt off him, leaving him topless and kind of
embarrassed.
“You look so good from here.”
“Shut your fuck and get your own off.”
Kirishima gained some (rather impatient) help from Bakugou when he did as he
was told. His shirt had barely come off, before he felt a fumble in the loins
of his pants; Bakugou had started to unzip Kirishima’s jeans, though his hands
were shaking nervously, and his grip slipped more than once, before he finally
got it open and rolled the pants a little down. He hesitated when he saw the
print of Kirishima’s dick through the dark grey boxers, his hands jittery and
his fingers twitching, and his eyes seemed both insecure and determined at the
same time. Kirishima figured he’d help Bakugou a little.
Bakugou jumped a little when Kirishima dug his hands into the boxers, briefly
feeling around in there for a while, before he pulled the hem over his cock,
which seemed to spring out excitedly upon being freed from the underwear.
Bakugou was still hesitant, though he carefully grazed Kirishima’s member with
his fingertips, before taking a deep breath and palming the erection. He
blushed even more than he already did when Kirishima sighed, deep and heavily.
“… God, aren’t you a little big, shit-hair?” Bakugou mumbled.
“Hm? Maybe?” Kirishima replied, before sucking in a breath through his teeth
when Bakugou rubbed his erection. However, now that Bakugou had gone ahead and
said that about his cock, Kirishima felt himself get curious again. He wondered
how big Bakugou was down there, and as always, he immediately wanted to find
out as soon as possible. Therefore, he sat up and reached over to Bakugou’s
fly, zipping it open before the blonde could react.
“H-hey, wait a second…! I’m not ready yet!” Bakugou said, startled by
Kirishima’s sudden touch.
“But… I wanna see yours too…” The redhead mumbled. He unconsciously started to
puppy face with his lower lip shot out, and Bakugou’s expression softened a
tiny bit, before it turned annoyed.
“Fine, but I can get it out by myself, thanks.” Kirishima retracted his hands
and grinned, to which Bakugou frowned. Shortly after, he stood up on his knees
and pulled down his pants, revealing his red briefs that had a clear outline of
his dick in it. He then shyly pulled the briefs down, and his cock slid out,
jumping a time or two now that was free.
Kirishima was all silent, and he probably weren’t aware of his slightly gaping
mouth, but Bakugou was, and he looked more and more embarrassed as seconds of
silence ran by.
“You are so cute.”
It didn’t seem as it amused Bakugou to be called cute again, he actually looked
almost pissed for a second.
“I will kick your ass, you fucking dweeb.”
Kirishima laid himself back down, (once again appreciating the utter softness
of Bakugou’s mattress) as Bakugou started to tug his pants and underwear off.
It took 30 slightly frustrating seconds for the blonde, and when they were off,
he hurled them at the floor, before starting to impatiently tug off his own
clothing. Kirishima thought it was so endearing, and he couldn’t help but
giggle at Bakugou, who just glared at him for a second.
When Bakugou positioned himself in front of Kirishima, the air changed a
little. Bakugou’s cock twitched when it touched Kirishima’s. The redhead
blinked for a few seconds, before he spat in his hand and grabbed both lengths,
trying to coat them in saliva. This made Bakugou groan, and his hips bucked
slightly, sliding their sensitive skin together.
“Fuck… Dude, warn me next time, will you?”
“There’s gonna be a next time?”
“You fucking wis-“ Before Bakugou could finish his sentence, he arched his back
with a moan and once again bucked his hips, unprepared for the intensity of the
friction. This resulted in even more friction, and Kirishima almost lost the
grip around their dicks when their balls gently grazed each other.
“Ohhh, my god, shit…” Bakugou whispered through his teeth, throwing his head
back. He bucked his hips again and thanks to Kirishima holding them together,
it felt positively amazing. The redhead had to concentrate a lot to keep his
hand in place; Bakugou grinding his cock towards his was a remarkable sight.
The red tint in his cheeks, the sweat that had started to trickle down the side
of his head, his slightly opened mouth, the wrinkles on the bridge of his nose
and between his eyebrows, his orange eyes, clear and somewhat hungry, the way
the muscles under his skin flexed and moved, his warm breath coating
Kirishima’s face, his hair that had begun to stick to his forehead ever so
slightly…
And the moans. Oh ho ho, the moans.
As their movements started to grow deeper and a little quicker, those moans
started to grow louder. Most of them were deep, throaty and somewhat strained.
Kirishima figured it had something to do with Bakugou feeling too prideful to
let himself moan too loud, but Kirishima, as open as he was, couldn’t hold
himself back, neither did he ever plan to. If there were a particular rub that
felt good, he wouldn't hold back and let everything slide out of his mouth,
like water down a waterfall. He figured that Bakugou would like to know that he
was doing a great job. It also seemed as the blonde liked hearing him moan like
that, which Kirishima would understand, because he would definitely like
hearing Bakugou groan just as loud as well. Bakugou had started to fasten his
movements, adding pressure and power to his thrusts. He had leaned forward, but
even as he was only half an inch away from Kirishima’s face, he seemed to be
unable to do anything but hump the redhead. Kirishima decided that he might as
well help Bakugou out again and leaned upwards to kiss Bakugou and lick his
lips, moaning and sighing into the corners of his mouth and occasionally
whispering “yes”, “fuck” and other words, even whispering a whole sentence of
what he considered sweet words, though he quickly forgot what exactly he had
said when he felt himself coming close.
“Shit, Blasty, I’m really close, I’m really, really, close…” He almost whined,
slightly squirming in place. He couldn’t figure out if he wanted it to last
longer or if he wanted release, but he definitely couldn’t get to decide which
of those things he’d get to do.
“Fucking shut up, I won’t last if you say shit like that you fucking penguin,”
Bakugou answered, his breath almost hindering him in talking and his thrusts
growing desperate. The bed creaked louder and louder, the sheets rustled
quietly under them and the sound of skin sliding and smacking together joined
the incomprehensible moaning.
Kirishima tried to hold his eyes open to look at Bakugou; he wanted to see his
face, especially when they were both about to shoot their load all over each
other. Kirishima quickly concluded that he’d shoot first, and he couldn’t even
reach up and kiss Bakugou. The only thing he managed to do was placing his
forehead towards the blonde’s. In the last second, he bucked his hip upwards;
meeting Bakugou head-on and increasing the friction to a maximum that didn’t
only make him come but also made him groan the loudest and lewdest he’d ever
done. His seed shot out of the tip of his cock, landing on his abdomen in long,
slender rivers that reached his chest area. He continued to thrust against
Bakugou, who’s humping had become shallow and quick with almost no movements.
It took less than ten seconds before he too let out a long and spine shivering
groan along with his cum that actually shoot far enough to hit Kirishima’s
cheek. As he lost himself in orgasm, Bakugou’s whole body tensed, frozen into
place and his groin almost fused together with Kirishima’s.
“Ohhhh, mygod. Oooohhhh, myfuckinggod. Shitty Eijirou, you’re so fucking good,
you feel so good...” Bakugou moaned, leaning in and pressing his forehead into
Kirishima’s. The redhead had to take some deep breaths, because the way Bakugou
hissed it his first name out like that made him feel a little too excited (he
might have gone hard again, actually). He snaked his arms around Bakugou’s neck
and pulled him closer, though since Bakugou had literally just come, he
collapsed onto the redhead and crashed their mouths together in a messy and
lazy kiss that was dripping with tired desperation. The continued to kiss like
that for a little while, until Bakugou suddenly broke the kiss.
“Fucking shit, you have spunk on your face.”
“It’s your spunk.”
“Gross.”
“Hey, you’re the one that came all over me. Also, excuse you? You have cum on
you, too.”
“No, I meant… Don’t you think it’s gross? To have fucking baby liquid in your
face?”
Kirishima blinked a little, before he smiled smugly and ran an index over his
cheek, swiping off the semen before putting it into his mouth. While he didn’t
exactly think it through and he for a second was a little afraid of what semen
would taste like, the reaction of Bakugou was payment enough. (The semen tasted
a bit salty, if you were curious, because let’s be honest, you were)
“Okay, now you’re being gross.”
“If that’s true, then you’re sure liking how gross I am.”
“Can you just shut your face for like five minutes?”
“You could shut me up in a lot of ways, you know. Especially after today~!”
“God, you’re disgusting.”
“And you’re cute.”
Kirishima cracked up as Bakugou covered his face with a pillow. He hoped that
they’d get around to do stuff like that again.
Chapter End Notes
     Please ship the Bakushimas with me
Please drop_by_the_archive_and_comment to let the author know if you enjoyed
their work!
 moving gently across her scalp. The
girl was small and warm, and Mycroft found himself missing her physical
presence in a way that he’d not felt since Sherlock had been a little boy,
before he'd stopped being affectionate.
Mycroft frowned throughout his afternoon as he contemplated how unpleasant he
found it to be away from his charge. He was supposed to be cultivating an
important source of information about James Moriarty, not contending with his
own needs.
“She’s getting stronger quickly,” Andrea observed later, back at the flat, as
she gathered up her things to leave.
“Her body, yes,” Mycroft agreed, shuffling the files and books that he’d
brought home from the Diogenes into their locations in his home office. “But
Moriarty had her a long time, and he broke her badly. I’m starting to doubt
that she’s ever going to be able to lead a normal life.”
Andrea looked sad at his words. “No? She’s so young. It’s going to take a lot
of time, but she still might adjust.”
“Perhaps.”
Mycroft retrieved the girl from his office and took her to his bedroom, where
she now had a drawer of her own that Andrea had been stocking with plain,
comfortable clothing for convalescence, mostly scrubs made from luxuriously
soft cottons and loose athletic items. He pulled out a breezy blouse and a long
skirt and laid them on the bed, then pointed at the en suite.
“Shower, brush your hair and teeth, get dressed, and come for dinner, please,”
he instructed.
She swallowed and nodded. It was the first time he’d expected her to get
through cleaning herself on her own, but she had turned out to be a fast
learner and he believed that she could handle it at her current strength.
She appeared half an hour later, freshly scrubbed to his satisfaction. With her
hair clean and trimmed, she was starting to look like a normal girl… she still
probably looked younger than her age due to the malnutrition, but that was
improving too. The worst of her bruises had deepened to ugly greens now,
and the milder scrapes and bruises were beginning to heal. She was wearing a
lacy headband that kept her hair out of her eyes, and Mycroft was pleased to
see how pretty her face was now that it wasn’t obscured behind filthy locks.
Why should that matter, Mycroft? She’s a child.
Mycroft stood beside the chair at the foot of the table. He’d made linguine
with clams in a light alfredo sauce, steamed and buttered squash, and a large
plate heaped with steaming garlic bread. Beside each of their dinners stood a
chilled glass, hers only half full. She froze, eyes wide, taking in the
tableau.
Mycroft pulled out her chair. She came forward tentatively, still obviously
nervous to be walking and even more nervous at the prospect of sitting in the
chair.
“No one is going to hurt you anymore, Willow,” Mycroft said firmly, inclining
his head toward her chair.
Gingerly she sat, and Mycroft pushed her chair in. She stiffened, unsure of
what to expect, and then relaxed again when he simply situated her. He picked
up the glass of wine, pressing it into her hand.
“Drink this. Slowly. It will help you with the meal.”
She hesitated before picking up her fork, and the utensils were clumsy in her
hands. Mycroft calculated that she’d probably eaten with them as a child, but
had probably not held during her years with Moriarty. She ate slowly and
methodically. Concentrating on using the tableware seemed to give her something
to take her mind off of the fear of sitting at a table, so Mycroft was silent
and let her apply herself.
After dinner, Mycroft cleared the table and took Willow to his office, where
instead of situating himself at his desk, he sat on the settee under the window
and patted the cushion beside him. He’d already set out the files and documents
he needed for his evening reading, as well as a bottle and tumbler. She looked
nervous about joining him on the couch, but when he maneuvered her so that her
head lay in his lap, she relaxed. He began to pet her and she sighed, nuzzling
her cheek against his thigh as his fingernails raked gently through her hair
and across her sensitive scalp.
She dozed off quickly, but he continued his ministrations, working on her
central nervous system even while she wasn't awake to appreciate it.
He worked on both tasks until shortly before ten, when he set aside his file
and gave her a tap on the shoulder, which she correctly interpreted to mean
that he was standing.
Mycroft led the girl to his bedroom, where he realized with bemusement that he
was disappointed to have lost the excuse to handle her hygiene personally. With
a rueful shake of his head, he took her into the bathroom as usual and brushed
her hair and teeth and washed her face. Over the days he had allowed their
routines to blur, so that while he put her out of the bathroom while he handled
private matters and showered himself, after that he had continued to tend to
both of their brushing and washing in parallel, like this.
Pyjamas for both of them -- he dressed her in a soft satin camisole and shorts
that Andrea had left today, both in a rich royal blue. She looked amazed,
fingering the fabric at the hem when she thought he wasn’t looking, her eyes
wet.
Mycroft lifted the covers and looked at her, and she slipped in. Mycroft
followed her, aware that his own heart rate was elevated.
It shouldn’t be.
***** Chapter 3 *****
She was as wide awake as he was, her small body trembling beside him.
As previous nights, he pulled her snugly against his side and began to pet her,
flooding her central nervous system with soothing warmth and touch and smell.
As she hid her face against his ribs, he alternately carded his fingers through
her curls and scratched his nails lightly across her scalp. After a few minutes
he began to stroke the skin on her upper back and arms, feeling gooseflesh
follow in the wake of his fingertips time after time.
It was almost ten minutes before she even began to relax. It was another ten
before he judged her to be as relaxed as she was capable of getting right now.
When her breathing was slow and deep and the shaking had subsided, he began to
pull her hair the way that she liked. He started with a grip close to the roots
that would feel pleasantly sexy to most people with a masochistic bent and many
people without one. Willow groaned, muffling the sound against his ribs.
“Good girl,” Mycroft rumbled encouragingly.
He patiently continued this level of stimulation -- petting, scratching, and
tugging her hair with one hand, stroking her skin with the other -- until she
began to shift against his side. At first her movement was nearly
imperceptible, but when he continued to praise her, her inhibitions continued
to evaporate, her body communicating its enjoyment to him more openly.
It was almost another fifteen minutes until she gave him the sign that he’d
been waiting for... tentatively at first, she began to pull in opposition to
the hand wrapped in her hair. That meant that it was starting to hurt, and much
more importantly that she wanted it to hurt. In fact, she wanted it to hurt a
little more than it was. Mycroft smiled in satisfaction where she could not see
it and responded by tightening his fingers in her hair.
“Do you want me to continue, Willow?” he murmured, to see whether she
could verbalize as well.
Her voice was slurred with pleasure. “Yes, Da--” she started to say, then
tensed at her error and blurted, “Yes, please,” instead.
He gave a sharp pull at the base of her skull, harder than any previous one and
insistent, to distract her from her slip. She liked it so much that she pressed
her thighs together, moaning softly.
Mycroft closed his eyes, telling himself that he was absolutely not aroused in
any way. He was doing this for careful, well-thought-out reasons, none of which
had to do with how incredibly appealing he found the idea of hurting her for
her own good.
He took a breath. It was definitely time.
For both of us.
“My dear girl,” Mycroft said, “For five days now I’ve been telling you that no
one is going to hurt you anymore. But that doesn’t actually make you feel
better, does it? Not exactly, anyway.”
As he spoke, he used his grip in her hair to anchor her skull where he wanted
it, braced tight against his side. He trailed the fingertips on his right hand
down her jawline, locating the spot that he was looking for, then slid his
thumb around the ledge of her jaw and pushed upward, directly into a cluster of
nerves. It would hurt, quite a bit more than having her hair pulled, but if
Mycroft was right -- and he was certain by now that he was right -- it was
going to send her much, much deeper rather than jarring her out of her
deliciously receptive state.
Indeed, Willow’s body melted into his side, her fingers clutching at the fabric
of his pyjamas, and she groaned again.
“I -- I’m sorry,” she whimpered, flustered.
Mycroft sighed heavily. “Actually, you may not apologize for this, Willow. This
was my error. My best efforts to take care of you through this difficult time
have apparently been… incomplete, so far.”
He pressed his thumb in harder, increasing the pain gradually. This allowed her
to adjust, so that he could find out at what point -- ah, there. She melted a
second time, her limbs going soft, her lips parting, her eyelids fluttering.
Instinctively she tilted her head back, further exposing the vulnerability that
he was exploiting.
This girl didn’t merely like pain. She loved it.
Mycroft rolled her onto her back, positioning himself on his side with his head
propped up on his hand. She was so immersed in the pain that she barely noticed
their change in positions. He drank in her expression, entranced by the purity
of her absorption in suffering.
“Moriarty chose you even more carefully than I realized,” he said mildly,
rolling his thumb slightly to set new nerves firing.
She swallowed, trying to collect herself enough to respond. “Yes -- yes. He
told me,” she replied breathlessly.
Mycroft could hear in her stilted cadence how deeply the conditioning went -
- she kept biting off her sentences before she could end them by calling him by
that wretched moniker. Moriarty had had several long years to train her, and
Mycroft had no doubt that the worse she was suffering, the harder it would be
for her to reign in the word.
Before he’d seen this, the indisputable evidence of the responses that clear,
sweet pain wrought in her young body, he would have thought it was a
miscalculation to let her address him that way. He’d intended to teach her to
call him by his given name eventually, anticipating that as she came to
understand her place in a more normal world that the even footing with her
benefactor would buoy her confidence. But of course, he’d been missing
important data when he calculated that. This morning had provided the first
clue, and here was the confirmation, plain to see.
Mycroft released his hold, easing his thumb slowly off the pressure point so
that she had a moment to reorient herself. He watched her open her eyes, then
close them for a few more breaths before chancing a second look. She blushed
trying to meet his eyes.
“I’m sorry,” she said again, for no reason.
Mycroft stroked her hair. “And what are you sorry for? That I misunderstood
what you needed? That I misunderstood why Moriarty chose you? I ought to be
apologizing to you, my dear. I was going to try to make you into something that
you should never have to be.”
He felt relief course through the little body beside him at his words. “You
mean I don’t have to learn to be a girl?”
A smile pulled at his lips as he stroked her arm. “Ah, Willow. I’m afraid that
you are still going to have to learn how to be a girl. I can promise, however,
that I will make you into a girl worth being." Oh, it was a relief to say it
aloud this time. "The important point for you for right now, dear, is that
becoming a girl doesn’t mean that you have stop being my pet. And it doesn’t
mean that you won’t need or want to feel pain.”
She sighed in relief at each of the important words -- at pet, at pain.
He went on, growing more certain of his revised plan by the moment as he felt
and saw her reaction. “You and I can go on as we have been. You will walk and
talk and eat at the table because these things are my preference, but in all
other respects you may continue to live as a pet. To remain in my company you
need to obey me, but you are and will always remain free to retreat to your own
bed in the closet in order to be left alone. Living like this will make things
easier on you while you learn to also be a girl.”
Her eyes widened as she listened to this. “I can be both?” she asked, sounding
dubious.
“Yes, Willow. People like you, people who enjoy pain, are special, and can
learn how to be both person and pet. That’s why Moriarty chose you, but he was
squandering you by reducing you to only one of them.”
He punctuated this point by trailing his fingers across the same pressure point
on the other side of her jaw, and she responded to the mere promise of pain by
tilting her head, eyelids fluttering. Goodness. Wherever Moriarty had found
her, he must have paid a pretty penny. How had her captors and sellers figured
out what a profound masochist she was when they were saving her to sell on the
virgin's block? Mycroft made a note to himself to dig into that aspect of the
trade.
“Now, then, little pet," he said to his ward, "I have something very important
to tell you. Are you listening closely?” Mycroft put his fingers under her chin
and tilted her head, staring into her confused green eyes.
“Yes -- yes. I -- I’m listening, I promise.” Again, the stilted cadence. It was
clear that the worse he hurt her, the stronger her impulse was to address him
as Moriarty had trained her.
“James Moriarty lied to you,” Mycroft said clearly, softly. “He lied to you
about many things. But you... you know this, don’t you, clever girl?”
She chewed her lower lip uncertainly, then gave in and nodded. “Yes. Yes. I
know. He lied to me.”
“Yes, he did. And now I have a question for you, Willow. Do you know what the
most important lie he ever told you was?”
She knew the answer, but she was afraid that she was wrong. She wanted to look
away, in shame, but she was finding that she couldn't break eye contact with
him without his permission. He had complete control of her now, he could feel
it.
“Yes.” Willow's voice was whispery, broken.
“Tell me. What was the most important lie that Moriarty ever told you?”
“He told me that he was my daddy.” Her muttered words were barely audible.
Clever, clever girl. “But was James Moriarty really your daddy, sweetheart?”
She shook her head adamantly, eyes still fixed on his, desperate to answer his
questions correctly, to please him. And despite all the trauma she’d endured,
despite how profoundly her nervous system was wired for fear, he knew that at
this exact moment in time it was no longer fear that motivated her… no, now she
was hoping that he would hurt her some more.
“Of course he wasn’t,” Mycroft said. “Moriarty stole you from people who never
owned you in the first place, and he lied to you, and he raped you and he
tortured you over and over and over for years. For all those reasons, I’m going
to find him and be rid of him, so that you are truly free of him and his lies
and his false claims on you. You understand me, don’t you, pet?”
“Yes. I knew he was lying.” There was real feeling in her voice now. She wasn’t
merely trying to please him; she meant it.
“Yes, my clever girl, of course you did.”
Her eyes widened now with her growing sense of urgency. “You’re going to be my
daddy now,” she blurted, breathlessly. “Aren’t you? My real daddy?”
Mycroft hid his startlement, keeping his expression smooth as he gazed down at
her. Of course that had been where he’d been leading her, but in five days she
hadn’t shown anything but terrified passivity, so he’d assumed he’d need to
coach her each step of the way.
He kept his voice mild. “Yes, dear, that’s right. I am. You’re going to stay
here with me now, and I am going to take care of you... I will feed you, and
clothe you, and teach you. And I will also hurt you, sometimes, when you need
it.”
“Yes, yes please, Daddy. Thank you, Daddy.”
The word, the sincerity and desperation with which she said it, set off an
avalanche of strange, intense feelings and reactions inside of him. Moriarty’s
absurd fetish for referring to himself as Daddy had always grated deeply on
Mycroft, so there was tremendous satisfaction in having usurped the title from
Moriarty’s own hand-trained sex slave with nothing more than a little hair-
pulling and a single pressure point.
And Mycroft’s own repressed sexual cravings had always involved the blurring of
caretaking and sadism. Fantasy held little appeal for him, so he’d never
imagined a woman calling him daddy, but he was acutely aware that the dynamic
behind such roleplay was the thing that he craved most deeply on the rare
occasions that he allowed himself to consider it... a sweet, helpless girl
whose life and well-being was entirely in his hands.
Now he had one of those in his bed with him, wearing the guise of a legitimate
professional interest.
Depending on how you defined the word 'legitimate.'
“Please hurt me, Daddy,” the girl implored Mycroft, blushing hotly.
He smiled as he gave her what she was begging for, for her own good.
This time Mycroft positioned the ball of his thumb over her right collarbone
and wrapped his fingers over the top of her shoulder, squeezing, vise-like. She
grunted, her eyelids fluttering again with pleasure.
He hurt her because she had asked nicely. He hurt her because he could, and
apparently that was going to be an important part of their future together. He
hurt her because he wanted to. And her response was blatantly sexual…
Willow was arching her back, whimpering for more. His eyes tracked the lines of
her throat as she swallowed and hummed.
“Yes, Daddy. Thank you, Daddy...” She was slurring again, drunk on pain.
Damnation. Mycroft shifted on the bed, as if he were leveraging more of his
upper body weight onto her protesting collarbone, but it was in fact a ploy to
distract her from the raging erection that her mindless begging was provoking.
Daddy. Until five minutes ago, he would have scoffed at any man who wanted a
woman to call him that.
Please hurt me, Daddy.
With a sinking feeling, Mycroft knew would hear those words echoing in his
skull whenever he took himself in hand, for, he suspected, the rest of his
life.
For a moment he didn’t know if she was actually repeating them or he was simply
replaying them to himself. He was aware that he was applying enough pressure to
her collarbone now that her moan had evolved into a pained gurgle, her eyes
pleading with him. He eased up and she panted, green eyes dark and fixed on him
with desperation and adoration.
Goodness. Once Mycroft had solved the puzzle earlier today, he had planned to
achieve this outcome tonight, if for no other reason than at least to confirm
the theory. But he certainly had not counted on bringing them both this far,
this fast. He’d been prepared and fascinated to introduce a measure of pain
into their bedtime routine, once he’d figured out that the girl was such a
profound masochist that she was bereft without it, but he sure as hell hadn’t
planned for it to provoke her (them both) like this.
He was pausing, giving himself a moment to take her measure and his own in
spite of the fact that the girl clearly badly wanted more. Her nipples were
stiff beneath the soft satin of her slip, and Mycroft was aware of the faint
musk of her increasing arousal among the sheets. Her skin was flushed anywhere
it wasn’t bruised, and her pupils were blown as wide-open as her masochistic
little heart.
“Ah, my dear girl," he said, eyes shining in appreciation. "You are absolutely
exquisite. You are a treasure.”
“I -- the only -- please, Daddy,” she hitched, frustration in her voice,
clearly unsure how to respond to his praise. Her body squirmed beneath him,
trying to entice him to keep touching her. “Please.”
To hurt her again.
“Shh,” Mycroft said, brushing her sweat-damp hair away from her forehead,
considering how much more pain he could inflict on her tonight without needing
to retreat to a bracingly cold shower before he had any hope of
sleeping thereafter. There were tears in her eyes now, and Mycroft was
fascinated to see how deep her genuine need ran in this area. Now that the
mystery was unraveling, he was surprised that she had made it through five days
of his constant reassurance that no one would ever hurt her again.
“Willow.”
He didn’t say her name loudly, but he put a slight edge in his voice, and she
quickly subsided into stillness beneath him. For a time her fear of him had
been subsumed in her arousal, but it surged back to the surface now. Mycroft
squeezed again over her collarbone, to focus her.
“I’m sorry, Daddy,” she said softly, eyes wide. He was going to have to train
the urge to apologize whenever she was uncertain out of her.
“My good girl.” He moved his palm downward, over her breastbone, and spread his
long fingers across the flush on her upper chest, giving her the gentle
sensation of pressing her down into the bed. She sighed.
“I’m going to hurt you one last time for tonight, Willow, then we’re both going
to sleep. This will be much harder than what you've taken for me so far, and
you may allow your body to respond however it likes. You will not be in
trouble.”
Her eyes shone. “Oh, Daddy.Thank you.”
Mycroft leaned over her -- it had been a long time since he’d done this, and he
knew that he definitely needed to keep his lower body well away from hers. It
was shameful, his reactions to such a young girl, but he told himself
forcefully that it wouldn’t have been happening if he hadn’t neglected himself
in favor of Queen and Country for so long.
He chose a patch of skin that was unmarked by Moriarty, and her young flesh was
enticingly soft between his teeth, the clean taste of her sweet on his tongue,
as he bit into her with slow, careful control. He started out painful but not
brutal, biting into the upper inner swell of her breast as he continued to
soothe her body with his hands in the ways that worked so well. She whimpered
softly, and for the first time she moved her own hands to rest on the back
of Mycroft's head, twining into his dark, damp hair.
He flattened her with his weight, rolling on top of her and reaching up to bury
both of his hands in her hair now. He used a tight grip to hold her skull
immobile against the pillow, his outstretched arms putting pressure on her
aching clavicles again, as he intensified the bite very, very slowly over an
excruciatingly long span of time. The slow, burning escalation combined with
her immobility allowed her to endure an intense level of pain, and would
also leave a beautiful, florid bruise, the first of his own. Her vocalizations
increased, and her body squirmed slightly, but she intuitively understood that
she was to stay as still as possible.
After a while, Willow started losing track of herself, squeezing her thighs
together, her stomach tightening. Her fingers scrabbled in the hair at
Mycroft's nape, and he closed his eyes in chagrin, silencing the noise that he
nearly made. He had to force himself to stay focused on what he was doing. He
could have interrupted her, taken her wrists, but he didn’t want to disrupt
what was happening elsewhere in her body, and her fingers moving mindlessly
over the back of his head.
His teeth were close to breaking her skin now, particularly his incisors. With
regret, he stopped increasing the pressure and merely held on. He
relinquished his grip on her hair and skull and placed his hands on her hips
instead, pressing her down into the bed firmly. He knew that, if she was still
physiologically capable of orgasm, that she would be close to it now. Mycroft
grabbed her right wrist and maneuvered her hand downward, between their
bodies, urging it toward her lower abdomen. He heard her slide her fingers
immediately into the slickness that he’d provoked, and within seconds the other
hand in his hair was gone, that arm sliding around his neck and tensing.
He tightened his fingers on her hips, knowing that his fingertips were going to
be clearly discernable tomorrow, which was clearly exactly what she needed. She
coiled, as tense from tip to toe as possible, and then gasped loudly and
repeatedly as her body finally released. His grip let him feel the rhythmic
contractions through her lower pelvis and he was fairly certain that it was a
true orgasm wracking her body in spite of the extensive damage to her clitoris.
He found himself wishing that he could see her, but he turned all of his other
senses to recording every detail of the event.
She came hard and long beneath him and he kept his hold on her with his
teeth throughout. Though long years of practice his dismissed the clamoring of
intense frustration in his own body, continuing to pay close attention to her
vitals. Eventually she shuddered and began to peter out, but Mycroft took a
deep breath and then dug in his teeth just a tiny bit more, causing two small
punctures. He tasted the tang of copper in his mouth and, exactly as he
predicted, the unexpected renewed pain pushed her back up out of resolution and
into a second orgasm. This time she wailed -- most women did, if you pulled
such a dirty trick -- and she grabbed him and clung to him with no hint of
self-consciousness.
Mycroft slowly began to relax his jaw as he let her come down for real this
time, cradled tightly in his arms and sobbing loudly. He let his weight shift
to one side and snaked that arm beneath her shoulders. He gently rocked her
through the storm, doing his best to wrap her in a cocoon of safety as she
slowly subsided from her pleasure back to the real world.
By the time he fully separated his teeth from her skin her sobs had become
softer and gentler, and when Mycroft peered down at her, her eyelids were
clearly heavy. Good. Perfect. It would take little soothing to move her
straight into sleep, which meant that he wouldn’t have to evaluate her
reactions to these new developments until the morning, when his own head was
also clearer. He stroked her hair as she cried herself out, holding her closer
than he had any previous night, aware how much safer she would feel in his arms
now that he’d unlocked the missing factor in his analysis. He wondered if she
would pull back as she resolved, but she didn’t, turning her nose into his
armpit and cocking her upper leg so her knee rested on the front of his thigh.
She was asleep quickly, and she slept deeply and without any nightmares, which
pleased him.
Mycroft, on the other hand, lay awake long into the night, knowing that he had
handled the situation exactly correctly and yet disturbed that his own
reactions had not been at all what he expected.
***** Chapter 4 *****
The next morning, Willow was noticeably less anxious. By lunch, two new events
had occurred, both of which Mycroft found highly edifying… after breakfast, she
came to him and pressed her head into his hand of her own initiative, actively
seeking comfort and touch from him. Then, after she was sufficiently soothed,
at the time when she would normally curl up under his desk while he worked, she
picked up one of the novels that he’d selected to leave within her reach and
took it with her.
She chose Wind in the Willows, which made Mycroft smile with the memory of
reading it to Sherlock when the boy was three. He watched her out of the corner
of his eye. Her rate of reading was slow for a girl her age, and she tended to
mouth the words to herself as she worked her way through the text, but she
didn’t skip words that she found difficult, instead taking the time to sound
them out. The new data further confirmed the hypothesis that he’d been forming,
that she was probably reasonably bright by normal standards, but woefully
undereducated. At least she could read at all, he supposed.
He had to spend the afternoon at his Diogenes Club office, and returned on the
late side for dinner. He’d left Andrea as the girl’s chaperone, preferring for
now to avoid John’s inevitable judgment regarding the new marks that Mycroft
had inflicted on the girl. After dinner, he took her to the extra bedroom which
he’d had set up as his gym. Willow’s confused frown made it clear that she’d
never seen anything of the sort before.
“Watch,” he told her, and turned on the treadmill at a sedate walking pace.
After demonstrating the concept, he helped her onto the belt and pressed both
of her hands onto the rails. “Keep your hands here.”
She seemed strong enough, and not too alarmed by the unfamiliarity, but it was
clear that she was concentrating on her breathing and balance in order to
follow Mycroft’s instructions. Perfect. He wanted her half-distracted, and it
was time to start rebuilding her physical strength, so he’d been hoping very
much to achieve both ends simultaneously.
Mycroft sat down in the nearby chair and opened her novel and began to read
aloud to her. It didn’t take long to determine that her auditory tracking was
superior to her reading skills, and after a few minutes to get used to the
treadmill she began to occasionally close her eyes to focus on his words for
long passages. At the end of the next chapter Mycroft closed the book and set
it aside, taking the opportunity to observe her.
She looked up again, but he made no move to take her off the treadmill -- it
had only been about ten minutes, and the easy pace hadn’t exhausted her yet.
“It would please me to take you out walking in St. James Park,” Mycroft said,
“but I don’t think you’ll be able to leave the flat without another panic
attack until I can assure you that James Moriarty is off the streets, do you?”
She chewed her lip. “No, Daddy,” she admitted reluctantly.
“It’s not unreasonable, Willow,” he reassured her. “And yet the problem
remains. And it’s a problem I would like to resolve quickly.”
He permitted the silence to stretch out, letting her work it out. He knew that
she had when she used the same buttons that she’d watched him press to increase
the speed of the treadmill. He hid a rueful smile at her first attempt to self-
soothe a surge of agitation, instead of needing his hands on her for it. There
was a slight, strange pang in his chest. He preferred her dependent on him,
truth be told.
“What do you want me to talk about?” she finally asked flatly, staring at the
display on the treadmill.
Mycroft tapped his fingers on the arm of his chair. “Everything. Everything
that you can remember, both about how he behaved and everything that you
overheard. I don't think he was very careful about what he discussed with Moran
when you were around. The more you can tell me, the faster I can find him and
put an end to this.”
Another long silence. It was clearly a difficult conversation for her, as he’d
anticipated.
She was starting to strain to keep walking by the time that she spoke again.
Mycroft was considering taking her off the treadmill soon, confident that her
young body would build strength quickly but not wanting to shake her confidence
by overdoing it.
“I understand, Daddy,” she said grimly, and the words had barely left her mouth
before Mycroft darted out of his chair, having just observed that her right leg
was weakening and she was about to crumple.
He managed to grab her and lift her clear of the belt before she went down,
though the weakness with which she clung to him made it clear that he had done
so just in time. Mycroft followed the moment by sweeping her up in his arms as
he had that first night, just shy of a week ago, and he carried the trembling
girl back to his chair and folded her in against his chest. He was pleased that
he could feel the difference in her weight, and not too concerned about her
response to the topic. He’d expected the moment to be difficult, and yet she
had agreed, and Mycroft was content to give her another night to brace herself
before he dug any harder.
The next afternoon John was due to come by the flat to check on her progress in
healing. Mycroft wished that he could simply tell the girl to keep the livid
bite mark on her upper chest and the bruises on her hips hidden from John -
- well, he could have, but he was fairly certain that such secret-
mongering would have had a detrimental effect on what he was trying to
accomplish with her. The better route forward, given what he now knew about
her, was to find a way to reconcile John to Mycroft’s new methods, but Mycroft
didn’t entertain any notions about the inevitability of John’s disapproval.
Mycroft was reading dossiers on the settee with the girl’s head on his thigh
when he heard Sherlock let himself and John into the flat. She’d been working
her way through the next chapter of her book, but had recently tired and let
herself doze off with Mycroft’s fingers carding through her hair. Resuming
physical activity had worn her out.
She started awake violently at the sound of someone other than Mycroft in the
flat, her heart pounding.
“Shh.” He gently scratched behind her ear. “It’s quite all right, it’s only
John and Sherlock.”
She sat up, taking deep breaths to calm herself, and followed Mycroft as he
rose and went to the front of the flat.
“Hello, Willow,” John said brightly, pulling his stethoscope out of his bag and
laying it over his shoulders with a practiced motion as Sherlock made a beeline
for Mycroft’s fridge and began to dig through it.
“Hello, John,” she responded shyly, perching on one of the tall chairs at the
breakfast bar. “Hello, Sherlock,” she added, earning a brief but considering
glance from Mycroft’s little brother.
“Finally making progress, Mycroft?” Sherlock asked. “You must be bribing her
with food, since I can’t imagine that it’s your company that’s helping.”
“An amusing accusation coming from someone currently raiding my larder,”
Mycroft observed.
“Boys,” John said chidingly, moving over to Willow, who held herself still to
avoid flinching from him. “Don’t pay attention to them, dear. You get used to
the bickering after a while.”
Mycroft noted with amusement that Willow was glaring at Sherlock in dislike.
John listened to the girl’s heart and lungs and checked each of the contusions
and lacerations that he had deemed to require dressing or to be at risk for
infection. It was when he was manipulating her jaw relative to her shoulders to
ensure that the swelling from Moriarty’s hands around her neck was going down
that he caught sight of the edge of the new bruise.
Mycroft watched John freeze for a second before tugging her collar aside.
“That’s fine,” Willow snapped, swatting John’s hand and pulling away.
Mycroft was surprised that she’d inferred John’s likely feelings about the mark
and its implications. The doctor merely frowned, but Mycroft noted how
carefully he was holding himself in order to conceal the intensity of his
disapprobation from her.
“I should swab that. The skin is broken,” John said mildly, without looking
over at Mycroft.
“Barely,” she mumbled, twisting away from him, sliding off of the chair and
moving to Mycroft. She insinuated herself under his arm and turned her face
away from the other men, against his side.
John’s expression was stormy, and Sherlock was pulling out of the fridge and
peering at them quizzically, exquisitely attuned to any disturbance in John
Watson’s mood no matter how much he pretended otherwise.
Mycroft squeezed Willow gently. “Go put yourself on the treadmill, dear.”
“Daddy --” she mumbled into his side, too softly for the others to hear.
“Now.” Mycroft put a slight edge on the word, and Willow shuddered and pulled
herself away from him, leaving the room with a nervous glance over her
shoulder. 
John started to speak, and Mycroft cut him off. “She was upset. It calmed her
down. I knew what I was doing.”
“What did he do?” Sherlock asked.
“I bit her, quite hard.” Mycroft refused to allow either of them to form the
impression that he wanted to hide what he’d done.
John was reddening. “I fail to see how hurting a child who has been tortured
and raped for the last several years would calm her down.” He wasn’t yelling,
but Mycroft was fairly sure he would have been if Willow hadn’t been just down
the hallway.
“You witnessed her responses just now. Did she seem traumatized when she pushed
you away instead of passively allowing you to do whatever you intended, the way
she would have a week ago? Did she seem frightened of me when she immediately
came to me to protect her from your unwanted attention?”
There was a twitch in the muscle of John’s jaw. “Stockholm Syndrome --”
“--nicely describes why she didn’t try harder to escape from Moriarty for the
past three years. It does not, however, describe her attachment to the security
of this location and my company. In fact, I was in danger of compromising that
security if I hadn’t begun introducing a small measure of controlled pain.”
Sherlock spoke with his mouth full. “Moriarty managed to acclimatize her to
such a degree? How?”
“Well, it’s certainly true that the only pleasure or comfort she ever received
from him was on the heels of the most extensive torture, so yes, he amplified
the effect. But I believe the more significant factor to be her natural and
profound masochism, which was clearly the main reason that he selected her.”
Neither psychology nor sexuality were areas of much interest to Sherlock, but
both Moriarty and the manipulation of human beings were, and he looked
passingly intrigued. John, however, was clearly not yet appeased.
“Look, fine, obviously I’ve encountered masochists in my own --” John
hesitated, “travels, but Jesus, Mycroft, she’s a kid. She needs to be taught
that she doesn’t need to be hurt, not indulged in whatever sick ideas Moriarty
put in her head. What would make you think --”
“She’s hardly a normal kid, John.” Surprisingly, it was Sherlock who
interrupted this time. Mycroft glanced appraisingly at his brother, and saw
some kind of recognition in his eyes. Well, it made sense, he supposed. Neither
Mycroft nor Sherlock had been “normal” children who behaved as expected either,
but Sherlock had certainly suffered more for his inability to mimic normal
childhood behavior when convenient.
John also looked surprised at Sherlock taking Mycroft’s side. “Sherlock, you
didn’t see the bruise. He didn’t just nip her. It was purple, and I could see
every detail of Mycroft’s dental history.”
“I held her down for over five minutes,” Mycroft supplied evenly, raising a
brow at his brother.
Sure enough, he saw a flash of recognition cross Sherlock’s face, and hid a
sigh of relief. While Sherlock was no masochist in the sense that Willow was -
- there was no link to his non-existent sexuality -- a little well-modulated
pain from Mycroft had provided an avenue for him to focus in times of panic on
a couple of occasions before he learned to control it himself, when he was very
small.
John made a noise of disgust. “Mycroft, you can’t just do this. It’s not
acceptable.”
“What are you going to do, John, call Child Protection on him?” Sherlock, his
own curiosity on the matter clearly satisfied, was returning his attention to
the large slice of cake that he’d produced from the fridge.
John looked frustrated. Now that Mycroft had Sherlock’s comprehension, he was
no longer worried about John’s response, but it would certainly make his life
easier to disarm it further.
Mycroft raised his hands placatingly. “I am willing to make a deal with you,
John, if it would ease your mind. After all, you are Willow’s doctor, and
speaking out of concern for her well-being. A concern which I remind you that I
share.”
John looked wary. “What deal?”
“My plan has always been that, were I to find Willow unresponsive to my own
strategies, Anthea would be the next to take custody of her, in the assumption
that a female guardian might be more effective. You are welcome to continue to
check in on Willow weekly even after it is not medically necessary, and if at
any point you believe that she seems more and not less traumatized than the
previous week, I will agree to place her with Anthea for the following week.”
John clearly didn’t like it, but another glance at Sherlock’s non-concern
clarified for him that he was alone in this. He narrowed his eyes at Mycroft.
“And you would actually do that? Just change your plan on my say-so?”
Of course not. “Of course I would, John.”
Well, the army doctor was halfway mollified.
Mycroft pushed forward. “And I assume that even you agree that this week, she
is obviously much less traumatized than when you first saw her?”
John looked annoyed. “Yes, obviously. But she would be, wouldn’t she? A week
ago she was starving and didn’t yet believe she’d been rescued.”
“Yes, yes.” Mycroft waved this away. “But if I am stepping wrongly, it will out
in the next several weeks, and you’ll step in to protect her.” Mycroft put
delicate emphasis on the last words, knowing how deeply John’s white knight
syndrome was knitted into the marrow of his bones.
There. John’s face finally softened, not all the way, but enough. Sherlock was
finishing his slice of cake -- they must have wrapped up a case earlier today
for his little brother to have such an appetite, for sweets no less.
From there, Mycroft was able to leverage Sherlock’s impatience and disinterest
to get them both out the door. It had been twelve minutes since Mycroft sent
the girl to the treadmill, and while he expected her to pass fifteen today, her
collapse yesterday was still on his mind.
He hurried to his gym and found that she’d set it higher than he liked, once
again providing a clear indicator of her level of agitation. Her face was set
in a look of intense concentration and her lips moved as she again silently
coached herself through an act that she found difficult. He paused in the
doorway to read her lips before she noticed him.
Daddy told you to stay here. Daddy told you to stay here.
Mycroft felt a strong feeling rise up inside of him, unexpected on the heels of
his recent cool-headed maneuvering of John Watson. This was -- what was this?
He realized he was frowning deeply as the girl noticed him there and looked up,
clearly anxious to find out what had occurred in her absence. Mycroft had
intended to reassure her quickly -- he didn’t need her to experience any more
anxiety than necessary at this critical juncture in her healing. But for almost
three seconds, he found himself so overcome with his own reaction to her self-
talk that he couldn’t figure out what he should be saying to her.
Daddy told you to stay here, she was telling herself. And so ‘here’ she had
stayed.
Gratification. Desire. Arousal. Affection. Longing.
Those were words for the various things he was feeling.
Mycroft was well used to people obeying him. Why should this feel so very
different?
With a great act of will, Mycroft shoved it all down. He could analyze it
later. Right now he had a frightened ward to manage. She was off the treadmill,
coming into his arms, clinging to him, her face turned up to him with fear
written on it. Her alarm cut through the haze of his own confusion, and Mycroft
gathered her up and pulled her into the chair, onto his lap.
“Don’t worry, dear Willow. I’ve explained everything to Dr. Watson and he is
quite understanding. He will continue to provide your medical care and we’ll
have no further issues with him misunderstanding any marks I leave on you.”
He felt her body relax in his arms, and she nuzzled her face into his chest,
sighing in relief. Her arms snaked around his neck without hesitation or fear.
“Can a doctor take me from you, Daddy?” she whispered.
“No one can take you from me, sweetheart,” Mycroft replied, squeezing her
gently. “No one will ever have the power to do that.”
And once again, he took the deluge of reactions that surged inside of him at
her trust and attachment to him and stored it firmly under lock and key,
telling himself that he would take the time to sort it all sometime soon.
And he determinedly ignored the knowledge that he was lying to himself.
***** Chapter 5 *****
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
While Willow showed no signs of being generally talkative -- a trait that had
factored highly into Mycroft’s offer to allow her to stay in his custody as
long as she liked -- over the next several days, with his careful prompting,
she began to open up about Moriarty. After some experimentation it became clear
that it was easiest for her to talk during her daily time on the treadmill, and
that her openness was further improved when he situated his chair out of her
line of sight.
Whenever she spoke about him her demeanor was strangely calm and detached, very
much as if she were relaying a story that she had read, a story about someone
else. Mycroft understood this to be normal for extreme trauma, a form of
dissociation. Fortunately his primary goal at the moment was intelligence, not
her recovery, so this mechanism served him well. He could always manipulate her
into fully processing the details of the trauma later, if she stayed with him
and if he wanted her to. For now he avoided making her talk much about the
things that Moriarty had done to her, always redirecting her to information
about his behavior and activities.
The emotional storms always came later, often after he had tucked her between
his sheets for the night. He found that they were easy to interrupt with pain
on nights when he needed rest, but he was aware that overuse of this strategy
would disrupt the trauma processing that he did wish to occur, so most nights
he soothed her through it with his fingers in her hair and his palms on her
skin instead. There were usually nightmares either way, but they were
considerably less severe on the nights when he gave her pain.
As the act of hurting her became more familiar, he found it easier to curb his
own responses in the moment, and by the end of the second week he was able to
will away the erections that had plagued him at first. Between his knowledge of
pressure points and predicament holds and her affinity for being bitten, he was
able to keep the act relatively platonic, other than letting her orgasm during
the peak of the encounter. He quickly learned that she was capable of climaxing
emotionally from pain without any physiological orgasm, and while this also
generally culminated in tears, they were obviously tears of relief and release.
Unfortunately, the willpower to control his body in the moment didn’t appear to
lead to the willpower to control it overall, and halfway through the second
week he gave in and resumed taking himself in hand in the privacy of the
shower. He had imagined some purity of purpose that would allow him to
repeatedly hurt a willing girl who loved the attention without requiring his
own release, but it turned out to be a chimera, and the truth was that before
he capitulated he was finding himself more and more distracted at times when he
needed to be focused on his work. At first he tried to think of more
appropriate women during those moments -- lovers from his university days,
subjects he’d interrogated, anyone for whom the onset of puberty was at least a
decade in their past. Eventually he gave up on that as well and allowed his
imagination to carry him down the ugly road of what he wanted to do to the girl
that it was actually his job to protect, then scrubbed himself nearly raw after
he was done.
But they found an equilibrium of sorts, and by the time of John’s two week
check-up she had grown over a centimeter, put on over half a stone, and only
the purple-green shadows of her worst bruises from Moriarty remained. Her
reading speed had also nearly doubled, and sometimes he found her sitting at
the window on the side of the flat that looked out toward the park, watching
the passers-by with interest.
Mycroft relayed all of this to John smugly, who reluctantly admitted that the
girl’s recovery appeared to be progressing faster than John had expected it to.
The doctor went on his way without more than a cursory grumble about three new
bite marks and the handful of thumb-shaped bruises that marked pressure points
from her jaw to the back of her knee. Mycroft was fairly sure that Sherlock had
said something persuasive to the good doctor in the time since his last visit.
It was during the third week that Willow began to perch on the high chair at
the breakfast bar instead of watching from the floor as he cooked for them, and
he realized that she was closely observing his technique. He brought her chair
around the bar and situated it where she would be out of the way but better
able to see, and began educating her on the basics as he worked. It didn’t take
long to realize that she became agitated, looking away and having difficulty
tracking his words, whenever he had a knife in his hand, and that she had a
hard time not checking on the location of the knife constantly even when he had
put it down.
On the third night, Mycroft deliberately placed her chair closer to where he
preferred to work at his cutting board. Sure enough, she leaned away from him
when he picked up the Misono and began to swiftly chop the vegetables on the
board, her breathing tight, clearly hoping he wouldn’t notice.
Mycroft paused in his work and turned to her, raising a brow. She blushed
bright red and looked down, radiating shame.
“Give me your hand, Willow,” he said, to see if she could do it.
Her eyes flew back to his face, wide and alarmed. “Wh-what?” she stuttered.
It was the first time she’d done anything other than comply immediately with a
direct instruction from him. Mycroft allowed his other brow to travel to the
height of the one that was already arched, manufacturing a look of annoyance
that he didn't feel.
“You heard me,” he said, sharper now. He transferred the Misono to his left
hand with a dangerous little toss and held out his right one, palm up, for
hers.
She was shaking, closer to a full-blown panic attack than he’d seen her since
the first week of her liberation. Every other time he’d responded with
immediate comfort, but today he was curious to begin to test the limits of what
he could push her into, especially given what the intricacies of desensitizing
such a dramatic trigger were going to be. So instead he simply looked at her
expectantly, hand waiting for hers.
“D-daddy. Please.” Her voice was broken, shaking as badly as her hands.
He tilted his head, eyes fixed on hers. “You know the rule, dear. You’re free
to leave my company at any time.” She hadn’t shown the inclination to spend
much time in her bed in the closet, though she sometimes now liked to read
there when he left her in the care of Andrea, so he knew that it wasn’t
disagreeable to her. She’d never once used it to avoid obedience though, and
Mycroft was genuinely unsure if she was about to. He tried to pretend that he
wasn’t finding the question slightly thrilling, but he wasn’t very convincing
to himself.
With agonized slowness Willow lifted her shaking hand and placed it on top of
his palm. Mycroft wrapped his fingers around her slender wrist, holding
it tightly. She began to cry, then, tears running freely down her cheeks,
though she struggled to hold in the accompanying sobs.
“I’m not going to cut you,” Mycroft said, moving the gleaming steel in his left
hand toward her skin. She began to gasp, and he realized that her shaking was
far too violent to place the sharp edge of the blade anywhere near her, no
matter how firm his grasp. Instead he laid the back edge across the thin skin
on the back of her hand, sliding it gently across her epidermis.
She lost control of her breathing and hurled herself backward. Mycroft felt and
saw the coming motion just in time to lift the blade and release her wrist, and
she stumbled before she caught herself, knocking the chair to the floor. In her
panic she automatically dropped to the floor and scrambled backward away from
him on all fours, unable to restrain her sobs as she scurried from the kitchen
and toward the bedroom.
Mycroft watched her go, lips pursed thoughtfully. It was going to take some
time to calm her down, he knew, but he decided to get the vegetables into the
roasting pan on a temperature much lower than he’d planned first. In the
meantime he pulled his phone from his pocket and dialed Andrea as he returned
to chopping the evening's asparagus, giving her elaborate instructions about
the files that he wanted her to prepare as soon as possible for his next
intervention.
Chapter End Notes
     Mycroft's knife, for any other fetishists out there: http://
     korin.com/HMI-UXGY-210?sc=27&category=280073
***** Chapter 6 *****
Her time on the treadmill was up to nearly an hour a day at a moderate walking
pace, so the next day Mycroft had plenty of time to steer her onto the topic of
Moriarty’s mutilation of her body and then away from it again. Conveniently,
he’d been able to mine enough useful information out of what she’d already
given him that he believed that he and Sherlock were closing in on Moriarty’s
likely location again, so he didn’t even have to begrudge taking the time to
deal with the personal aspect of the issue.
Used to the process by now, she was able to maintain her strange detachment
even as she described being repeatedly tied down and having tissue carved from
her genitals in incremental chunks. The only sign of her distress was her thumb
on the treadmill speed, to the point where Mycroft had to instruct her to stop
increasing it. She’d not yet had decent nutrition for long enough for him to
permit her a jog.
As Mycroft had suspected, Moriarty had drawn the mutilation process out,
taunting the girl about the fact that neither of them could know which cut
might be the one to destroy her sexual response, leaving her anorgasmic. She
was unclear on what parts of her anatomy had accrued the most damage, though
Mycroft knew from John that most of the tissue removal had been from her labia
and clitoral hood, with the damage to her clitoris consisting of relatively
clean cuts.
Mycroft was sure to get her focused on Moriarty’s other behavior with a good
twenty minutes left, enough time that there was little threat of another panic
attack by the time he called a halt and sent her to the shower to clean up
before dinner. He was aware that her nerves had been building throughout the
day, but he placed her beside him at the counter and began to prepare the
evening’s ingredients without showing any interest in provoking her phobia
again. With some careful effort he managed to fully engage her in a
conversation about alternative strategies for mincing onions efficiently, and
by the time he was throwing ingredients into sizzling oil, she displayed a
level of apprehension about the knives on the counter no more intense than the
night before he pushed her.
After dinner, instead of taking her to his office for his evening reading,
Mycroft instructed her to remain at the table while he cleared. Once the
surface was wiped down, he seated himself beside her with the folder that
Andrea had presented to him earlier in the day.
He pulled out the top page and set it before her. There were thirty small
images arranged across the page, varied from a large, serrated hunting knife to
a surgeon’s scalpel.
“Which one of these do you find most frightening, Willow?” Mycroft asked
gently, sliding his fingers into her hair and scratching.
She froze, staring at the page in trembling fear. Each image was small, far
removed from reality, but detailed enough to easily distinguish one from the
next. Pocket knife and paring knife. Boning knife and crafting blade. Multi-
tool and chef’s knife, similar to the Misono that had started it all.
She looked up at him, and he smiled and nodded reassuringly back at the page.
“You can do this, because I want you to do this, my dear girl,” he told her.
“Now... which one?”
She turned her attention back to the images. Mycroft’s fingers carded through
her curls, his palm smoothing the soft skin from the nape of her neck down her
spine. It took a long time, but he was patient. She kept glancing at him
uncertainly, and each time he nodded back at the page with a reassuring smile.
She took a deep breath, and focused.
She studied the page for nearly seven minutes, her eyes moving from one tiny
image to the next, from the paper to Mycroft and back. He’d been prepared to be
patient, though, and was careful not to let the slightest sign that she might
interpret as annoyance cross his face. He stroked her and soothed her as she
examined each image, noting the reactions that she tried to hide.
Eventually she raised a trembling finger, and laid it on one of the larger
pocket knives. Her eyes were wet when she looked up at him, and Mycroft gave
her an approving smile and leaned in to press a kiss to her forehead.
“My good girl. Thank you.”
Mycroft noted her selection, and carefully thumbed through the other pages that
Andrea had prepared, pulling one free and exchanging it for the one on the
table. It was filled with images of larger, higher-end pocket knives, mostly
Benchmades and Spydercos and Gerbers.
She took a long, shuddering breath as she looked over the images on this page,
and Mycroft knew that they were moving in the right direction. Again he worked
his fingers into her curls and soothed her as he waited, and she studied each
image carefully in spite of her intense discomfort.
Only four minutes, this time, before she laid her finger on an image in the
second-to-last row. It was a Spyderco, though Andrea had grouped the blades by
aesthetics and not maker, since the girl would almost certainly be going on
appearance alone.
Mycroft produced a third page filled with knives of a similar shape, all with
menacing, leaf-shaped blades and fully metal construction. Most here were
Spydercos, though he recognized a number of knock-offs inspired by the brand as
well. When he put it in front of her, at first she refused to look down,
staring at him with pleading eyes.
“You can do this,” he told her again, reaching up and cupping her face in his
palms.
“I don’t want to,” she said in a wobbling voice.
“I know, sweetheart.”
She blinked, took a deep breath, and began to examine the page. This time she
took one thorough look at each image and moved on, and within a minute she put
her finger on the page and looked away.
“That’s the one. That’s his,” she said flatly, unable to meet Mycroft’s eyes.
He made a mental note and shuffled the papers away, then led the now-shaking
girl to the office for their evening routine.
He knew that she would have an idea of what must be coming, and that dragging
it out was only going to make it harder on her, so he cleared his schedule for
Sunday, which was two days out, and spent as much of the intervening time as
possible petting her and soothing her central nervous system. He also gave her
a break from talking about Moriarty during her next appointment with the
treadmill, instead prompting her to talk about A Wrinkle in Time, her current
novel. John came by for her one-month check-up, and left satisfied that she was
continuing to progress, and particularly pleased with her weight gain.
The uncomfortable truth was that Mycroft was looking forward to it. Obviously
he spent a great deal of his time anticipating various reactions and scenarios
-- it was, after all, what he did for a living -- but this was as much pleasant
fantasy as it was analysis and planning.
Sunday he woke her early, wanting her underslept, a little off balance. He gave
her toast and juice, then put her on the treadmill for an hour at eight kph,
having finally gotten John’s clearance the previous day for higher-impact
exercise. By the end she was sweaty and exhausted, and he took her to his en
suite and cleaned her up himself, brushing her hair and tying it back,
scrubbing her from tip to toe. He dressed her in a simple but comfortable frock
of luxurious silk that he’d acquired for the occasion after an embarrassing
amount of consideration, then fed her a more substantial brunch, one that
wouldn’t sit too heavily in her stomach.
She was unusually subdued, which was saying something, as the vast majority of
the time she only spoke in response to prompting anyway. But he was aware how
exquisitely sensitive victims of extended trauma tended to become to subtle
shifts in routine and mood and what they might portend, and he’d certainly
given her enough clues that he didn’t intend to permit her phobia to persist
for long. Right now he was reading her as full of dread more than anxiety, but
he knew that all that was about to change.
Mycroft took her hand and led her to the sitting room, where he’d closed all of
the velvet drapes overlooking the park. He led her to one of the heavy, high-
backed chairs situated near the window instead of to the more comfortable
wingback chairs before the fireplace.
“Have a seat, Willow,” he instructed.
She looked at him, swallowed, and sat down gingerly on the edge of the chair.
He put his hand on her sternum and pressed her back, then lifted her hands and
placed them on the arms of the chair.
“Like this, dear. You understand?”
“Yes, Daddy.” Her voice was small, and she was staring at her knees.
Mycroft picked up the small side table and placed it two feet in front of her.
He stood on the far side and slid his hands into his pockets.
“Look at me, sweetheart.”
Willow looked up at him unhappily.
“I am not going to cut you. Do you understand me?”
She was trying to control her breathing, but not doing a very good job of it.
“Yes, Daddy. I understand.”
He held her gaze. “Have I ever lied to you, Willow?”
She thought about it for a moment before she answered. “No, Daddy. You’ve never
lied to me.” That wasn’t technically true, but as long as she didn’t know the
difference it would remain effective enough... and she would never know the
difference.
“Good girl. So do you believe me, then, when I tell you that I’m not going to
cut you?”
“Y-yes, Daddy.”
“Good. Then please say it.”
She sniffed. “You -- you are not going to cut me, Daddy.”
Mycroft produced the knife from his trouser pocket and laid it, still folded,
in the middle of the table. Her breathing tightened considerably, but it was
clear that she’d been braced for its appearance, and she didn’t seem to be
moving into a full-blown panic yet.
He circled around behind her chair, trailing his hand over her shoulder. Her
muscles were rock hard under his palms, and he could see the clench in her jaw.
He slipped his fingers into her hair, locating the spot on the back of her
skull where gentle scratching almost always sent a shudder down to her toes. He
trailed his nails back and forth across it, patiently, repeatedly. When it
failed to evoke the usual response, he switched to carding his fingers through
the rest of her curls, then to stroking her shoulders and the column at the
back of her neck.
“I’m right here with you, Willow. I’m not going to do anything that you can’t
handle, and I’m going to help you handle everything that I do.”
“I trust you, Daddy.” She didn’t sound entirely convincing at the moment, but
Mycroft didn’t take it personally, given the provocation.
He cycled patiently through all of the techniques that he had learned to soothe
her. He was pleased that he’d not had to tamp down on true panic this early in
the process, but her grim intensity was impressive, and he knew that he was
going to have to dial it down degree by careful degree. There would be no
shortcuts today.
Not that he wanted them, really. He was enjoying this already, and anticipated
a delicate and engrossing challenge ahead.
He pressed his palms down her upper arms, then slid fingers down her jawline
and briefly pressed into the cluster of nerves under her jaw. Her head tilted
only minutely… she was still too detached from her body to enjoy it, so he
moved back to stroking and petting her.
“You are safe,” he told her gently and repeatedly as he worked on her. “You are
here, with me, in my home, and you are safe. You will always be safe here, and
you will always be safe with me.”
She sighed. Degree, by careful degree.
It was twenty-four minutes before he was able to get a response from the hot
spot buried beneath her head of curls, and thirty-seven before the application
of mild pain was effective to release a measure of strain from her muscles.
At fifty-four minutes he was satisfied. She was still miserable, but her body
was, if not relaxed, at least calm beneath his hands, and responding as he
wanted.
Mycroft circled her again, standing between her and the table now, and leaned
down to take her hands from the arms of the chair. “Come with me, my very, very
good girl,” he said, and with a sound of obvious relief she allowed him to lead
her from the room.
He took her to the office, where he handed herA Wrinkle in Time and pulled her
onto the settee, head on his thigh, for an hour of reading and petting. He had
plenty of documents to work though today, but he quickly realized that he was
so distracted by his project that he was only taking in information at ninety
percent of his peak efficiency. His mind kept wandering back to the question of
how she would respond if he pushed her as hard as he wanted to, and it derailed
his analyses time and again.
No matter. This part was simply passing time anyway, letting her nervous system
unclench. She surely knew there was more to come, but he could feel her giving
in to the now-familiar routine, to his soothing hands in her hair and on her
body.
At eleven o’clock he put his files aside and she followed suit with her novel
without being prompted. She was immediately anxious again, but that was to be
expected as he took her back to the sitting room where the Spyderco still
awaited.
She went to her chair and arranged herself again as he had before, taking a
deep breath and looking up at him. He smiled approvingly as he leaned over and
picked up the knife.
The moment it was in his hands her eyes were locked on it again. Mycroft
unfolded the blade, and her whole body jerked at the loud click of the locking
mechanism. He placed it back on the table.
She stared at it, tears leaking slowly down her cheeks now. She chewed her
bottom lip, having to work much harder to avoid starting the process of
hitching for air that was sure to push her into a panic attack. He moved to her
quickly, getting his hands on her to help her ground herself again.
This time she sagged right away when he touched her. Clever girl, clearly aware
of what came next and this time desperate for the eventual relief that she knew
that he could bring to her if she opened up to it.
It still took a great deal of time, care and effort, even now that she
understood what was expected. On the one hand she’d already experienced the
first round of desensitization; on the other, the exposure of the blade clearly
terrified her. It took Mycroft almost an hour and a half to get her where he
wanted her this time, even with her active cooperation and desperation for it
to work.
They took another break then, a light lunch that she struggled to get down. He
was gratified when he didn’t even need to state that he wanted her to finish
it… not only did she understand how short her leash was today, but he knew that
she was starting to understand that she wanted it that way if she was going to
get through the rest of the process. So she chewed and swallowed grimly, and
drank the half glass of wine that he gave her without protest.
She was relieved when he took her to the office for another hour before
returning to the sitting room, though this time she opted to doze on his lap
instead of picking up her novel. He was aware that she wasn’t really asleep,
but she seemed to be conserving energy, actively taking the break before
whatever he intended to do next.
This time when he put his folders aside she sobbed softly, but she did her best
to gather her composure as she followed him obediently from the office. When
she settled into her chair he positioned himself behind her immediately, hands
on her shoulders, squeezing lightly.
“What comes next, pet?”
She exhaled, long and shuddering, her fingers tightening on the arms of the
chair.
“You’re going to pick it up, Daddy?”
“Yes. And then…?”
A hitch. Another hitch. Then a slower, controlled breath.
“I don’t think I can do this, Daddy. I’m sorry, god, I’m sorry.” She sobbed in
despair.
Quite the contrary, though, he’d expected a crisis of faith at some point. He
brushed her hair forward over her shoulders, exposing her nape, then leaned
forward. His teeth closed on the back of her neck as his hands found her wrists
and held them firmly against the arms of the chair.
She froze, her breath suspended within her body, a bone-deep vibration running
through her. Mycroft bit down firmly, squeezing her wrists hard enough to grind
the bones against each other.
“Unhhhg…” was roughly the sound she made, overcome by the sudden, unanticipated
onslaught of moderate pain from three quarters at once. He couldn’t know
whether her eyes remained on the knife or not, but he certainly felt the
shudders running through her. Harder he bit, and harder he squeezed, and he was
rewarded when she pushed back into the chair, into him and more pain.
“Daddy.” She could barely get the word out. She was twisting her wrists within
his grip, her head fallen forward. She certainly wasn't looking at the knife
now.
Mycroft released her neck but not her wrists, and put his lips near her ear.
“You can do whatever I tell you to do, Willow.”
There, a hard shudder. She was softer, now. Trembling, yes, but soft... in his
hands, between his teeth. He could taste her compliance, her sweet masochism on
his tongue, on his teeth, on the roof of his mouth.
He released her wrists and came around in front of her, looking down at her
from his height. She looked up through tears clinging to her lashes, her mouth
slightly agape. He knew that the time for the methodical approach had passed.
She needed more.
Mycroft slid one foot back, pushing the table where the knife still waited
further away, so that he had room to squat down on his heels before her. His
body now obscured her view of that which she feared. Instead, he filled her
field of vision himself. He kept his expression calm and composed, though he
knew that his eyes, which more than one lover of his youth had described as
chilly, would be glittering with the intensity of his attention.
He savored the apprehension in her expression with regards to what he was about
to demand of her, and the way that her eyes, held by him, pleaded for his help,
for his stability and his strength and his cunning, careful manipulation.
Mycroft smiled, wanting her to see how pleased he was with her. “You are my
very good girl, and you can do anything that I tell you to. Isn’t that right,
sweetheart?”
He could see the conflict inside of her, but with him in front of her,
overwhelming her, there was only one way forward for her. “Yes, Daddy,” she
answered, her voice cracking with emotion.
“Good. But because it’s my job to take care of you, I’m going to help you do
what I’m telling you to. Would you like some help, pet?”
“Yes, Daddy.”
“I thought you would.”
Mycroft stood and moved away, letting her see the knife again. He fetched the
soft silk rope he’d procured, already pre-cut to the various lengths he
required. When he came back to her with it in his hands, he saw the relief
course through her body.
“Oh god, thank you, Daddy,” she whispered brokenly.
Mycroft took his time binding her, knowing how the process would soothe her
back down before the next step. Wrists and elbows, first, to the arms of the
heavy chair, then knees and ankles to its legs. He bound her to the high back
at her waist, another set of ropes under her armpits, crossing over her sternum
and shoulders. He used several loops at each point, immobilizing her thoroughly
without cutting off circulation.
When the job was done he stood back and regarded her. She’d eventually closed
her eyes while he worked, letting her head sag forward again as she relaxed
into the bondage.
He stood back and admired his handiwork -- each knot laying flat, in the
orientation that he’d intended, loops all neatly aligned. Mycroft did
appreciate the details. Willow, who loved both control and pain, looked back at
him with obvious gratitude on her face.
“Are you ready?” Obviously, she was not ready, and would never be ready, but
making her say it would force a sense of participation in the process.
“Yes, Daddy,” she lied, passingly well, though the tightness around her eyes
betrayed her.
Mycroft picked up the knife, testing its weight and balance in his hand. He’d
already familiarized himself with it thoroughly, but the display was for her
benefit. For all that Mycroft had come to despise James Moriarty -- and his
loathing ran stronger and deeper than ever after the last month -- the maniac
had impeccable taste in both suits and weapons. The Spyderco was only a little
larger than the average pocketknife, nothing ostentatious, but the feel of the
cool shaped metal handle in Mycroft’s palm, the wicked but not vulgar curve to
the blade… it was a work of art, a beautiful knife, but one that was made to be
used, not admired. It was ruthless.
And Moriarty had used his ruthlessly, to take her apart. Mycroft was about to
use it to carve her into something better, stronger.
He scooted the little table forward and sat down on it before her. She was
sweating lightly in the cool room, her eyes flickering between the knife and
Mycroft’s face.
“First, over fabric, not skin. This will not change without warning. Do you
understand, Willow?”
She took a long, shuddering breath. “Yes, Daddy.”
Mycroft lowered the tip of the blade to the front of her thigh, over the silk
of the dress. He’d expected her to tense or jerk when she felt the blade make
contact, but she didn’t. There was a faint twitch in the muscle of her thigh,
clearly involuntary. She was inhaling, slowly, and she didn’t gasp either. Just
the blade, coming into contact lightly, and tracing a line toward her knee.
He looked up at her. Her eyes were fixed on his face, not on the knife. Her
teeth dug into her lower lip, which was trembling, and she swallowed hard.
Mycroft’s heart lurched in his chest, sudden and unexpected. He knew he was
seeing a form of controlled dissociation, her focus on him instead of the
object in his hand, and that he would have to disrupt it before they were done,
and yet… her attachment to him, her trust in his control, her desire for pain
at his hands, were all stronger than her fear of the knife that Moriarty had
used to cut her apart. Suddenly, it was Mycroft who could barely breathe, and
had to focus to keep the blade still where it had come to rest.
Through decades of cultivated habit, Mycroft’s brilliant mind had begun
concealing his reactions before he fully realized what was happening. She
didn’t need to see how her trust had just hit him like a punch to the gut. This
moment, this process wasn’t supposed to be about him, but her. They were frozen
like that, staring at each other, the tip of the blade resting about six inches
above her left knee.
After a moment, he lifted both his brow and the blade. He’d managed to get a
hold of himself, he thought without her noticing that anything was amiss.
“Not so very frightening, dear? Hm, what about this?”
He placed it against her sternum, between her small breasts, just below the
ropes that pressed back on her collarbones and held her upper body against the
chair. This time she sucked in a hard breath just before the sharp tip made
contact, as if to pull away. But she didn’t glance downward even for a moment,
her eyes still on him instead. Out of his peripheral vision he saw her fingers
tighten on the arms of the chair until they were white, and he half-heard,
half-felt her heart hammering wildly in her chest. She was far from calm, but
she was holding herself just this side of panic by focusing on him.
So much for controlling the responses of his own body. Mycroft shifted
uncomfortably… he had plausible deniability as long as he sat like this, but
there was no way to stand up without presenting her with obvious evidence that
he liked what he was doing very, very much.
He trailed the knife downward, toward her navel, and she held very still. He
didn’t need to look down… he’d ensured that the blade was very sharp, a firm
believer that dull blades only encouraged careless handlers, but the silk of
the dress was thick enough that he wasn’t going to cut it, or her, without a
slight increase in pressure.
Her eyes were so wide now that he could see the whites all the way around her
irises, and he wondered if she was going to chew through her lip, but when he
pressed in just a bit over her navel, making sure that she could feel the tip
and not just the edge, she responded with a small, tight nod of encouragement.
She took a deep breath. “You can… you can touch my skin. I can handle it,
Daddy, I promise.”
He felt the corner of his mouth lift in appreciation. He hadn’t meant to let
the reaction through his filters, but on second thought she had probably earned
it. She was surprising him. Surprising him, Mycroft Holmes. A slip of a girl,
beaten, traumatized… and moving faster than he’d been prepared for.
It made him want to push her even harder, even faster.
It made him want to know just how hard and fast he could push her.
It made him wonder what would happen if he pushed her harder and faster than
that.
“As a matter of fact, I would like to touch your skin with this knife. But I
want to know, do you want to feel the blade in my hand, sweetheart?”
She blanched. It was a cruel question, deliberately so. The obvious answer was
‘no.’ Of course she didn’t. Of course she never would. Except that he’d phrased
the question carefully, reminding her that the knife that she hated was in his
hand now, and she liked what he did to her with his hands.
“Yes, Daddy,” she answered, her voice tight with effort.  She was lying, but
she was lying in the way that masochists did when you had them fully,
inescapably ensnared. She didn’t want to feel the blade, not in the least. What
she wanted, however, was for Mycroft to make her feel it anyway.
He hadn’t expected it to go this way. He’d been prepared for a pure
desensitization exercise, and he’d known how tricky it would be and therefore
how rewarding for him, but this?
This was sex.
And his body knew it, no matter how much he disapproved of her age. He was rock
hard. He couldn’t remember the last time his body had been screaming at him for
attention, for release, like this. Adolescence, probably, when his hormones had
been an absolute torment to the reason-loving young man that he’d been.
She was watching him, waiting fearfully. He was off-balance, not reacting as
quickly as usual, derailed by her unexpected overtures and the sheer, forceful
want that they were eliciting.
Mycroft put his left hand on her knee, pushing the fabric of her dress upward.
There was no pretending that the familiar motion was anything other than the
prelude to a seduction, not anything that he ought to be doing to a girl her
age, but then he supposed no one else would think that he ought to have been
biting her for the last four weeks either.
She inhaled, bracing herself. He laid the edge of the blade on her and drew a
smooth, curving line up the front of her thigh, toward her body.
Her shaking within her bonds was violent now, her erratic panting barely within
her control. She was terrified out of her mind. And yet, she moaned, a moan of
completely undeniable pleasure.
He drew a half-circle, brought the tip of the blade down again. He glanced down
for just a second to check how her skin took the pressure… the faintest pink
line marked its track, not raised at all. Her pale skin was sensitive, but not
overly so. He was in no danger of breaking his promise not to cut her.
He very much wanted to break that promise.
“Daddy.” Her voice was small, breathless, and to his great astonishment he felt
her try to press her thigh up toward the blade. The elaborate bondage permitted
her to do no such thing, but he could read it in her muscles and tendons.
“Willow.” He also spoke softly, strangely aware of the heavy, expectant silence
in the room. The thick velvet curtains and reinforced windows completely
muffled the noise of the grey London afternoon outside, and he could hear his
blood pounding in his veins. He could hear both of them breathing, and if he
listened very closely he could hear the faint scratch of steel moving over
epidermis.
A line. A loop. A curve, this one tracing from the front of her thigh downward
on the outside of her body. Another line, across her quad, and the tip of the
knife was sliding over thinner skin, her inner thigh.
He should be doing no such thing. But she was swallowing repeatedly now, and he
could read from the bite of the rope into her ribs that her back wanted to
arch, was trying to arch. Every once in a while a soft sob escaped from between
her lips. Her eyelids fluttered, but she didn’t try to close them, obedient to
his clear desire to hold her gaze.
Mycroft’s tongue touched his bottom lip. He glanced down again to confirm his
mental map of her topography, then used the tip of the knife to push her dress
further up her thighs. It covered only an inch beyond her knickers now, the
fabric falling in a smooth drape between her spread, bound legs. He knew full
well that the panel of fabric that covered her perineum was exposed to the room
even if he couldn’t discern it from this angle.
Her scent was clear in the air. Her nipples were hard beneath the silk bodice
of the dress. Her face was flushed with both fear and desire.
He knew he should say something, break the spell. Something to put the focus
back on her, back on the desensitization, back on the fact that this was
intended to be helping her, not gratifying him.
He didn’t. He slid the tip of the knife under the edge of her skirt, right up
to the hem of her knickers, then followed it down into the hollow of tendons on
the inside of her thigh where it met her groin. It was a place he had no
business being. She hated and liked it so much that her head fell back with a
thump and she could no longer keep her eyes open, a long groan squeezing past
her tight throat.
Mycroft trailed the knife across the taut fabric of her knickers to her other
inner thigh. She couldn’t press forward more than a millimeter, but it was
enough for the point of the knife to dimple the fabric, to tug it in its path.
It was the same knife that had mutilated her flesh, within a hair’s breadth of
the labia that had been carved into. And she was pushing toward it, proving
beyond any question that she was absolutely eroticizing her terror.
Mycroft had to pause a moment to gather himself.
He realized with a flash of incredible shame and arousal that he had to stop
thinking about the disfigured flesh beneath her knickers or he was going to
cream his pants like a boy. Controlling his breathing through great effort, he
looked up -- her head was still back, her eyes closed, and a novel of mingled
fear and pleasure was written in every line of her face. She still had no idea
how strongly she was affecting him, how off-track he had gotten.
Mycroft knew, though. Nothing happening in his brain or body was supposed to be
happening, and he hadn’t planned adequately for appropriate self-management.
Concentrating, he knew he needed to move the knife somewhere safer, so he laid
its tip on her chest again, tracing a line on the expanse of white skin below
the silk rope and above the deep scoop neckline of her dress. Surely, surely he
would be able to keep his traitorous desires in check if he just kept the
damned knife above her waist and refused to think about her disfigured genitals
and all the ways that he could fix them to his liking.
The tip moved lower, tracing the neckline of her dress, outlining the shape of
the exposed skin. Her breathing picked up further as the knife pushed up over
the subtle swell of the tops of her breasts. Oh, how she wanted to move, to
bring the threat and the danger closer to the parts of her that were tight with
wanting.
Again he checked her face. This time she was peeking up at him, and the look in
her eyes made him realize abruptly that he must have stopped guarding his own
expression when she was offline and he was distracted.
“You want to cut me, Daddy,” she said, and while her voice was still had the
quake of her fear in it, it held another note as well… she wasn’t really asking
him a question. She knew that what she said was true, and some small, not-yet-
mature part of her was recognizing the power that it gave her over him with
something like… wonder.
She knew that he wanted to cut her, and she knew that he believed that he
shouldn’t do it.
Mycroft was paralyzed for several seconds, unsure what to do next. She gave him
a small, shaky smile, and took a deep breath.
“Please, Daddy. Do it. Cut me. I bled for him, so much. I don’t want to have
bled for him, but never for you. It’s not right.”
Mycroft gave a soft, incredulous laugh and sat back, letting the knife drop to
his knee.
But she saw her advantage, and pressed it. Not expertly, perhaps, but
effectively all the same. “If you have to make me do this, at least give me
this,” she argued, pulling at the ropes so that they bit into her skin. “Blood,
Daddy. You want to see it. I think you want to taste it.”
Mycroft had prided himself on his flexible and practical morality ever since
he’d been a boy. But this? This was absolutely wrong.
And he just didn’t care any more.
He raised the knife and, with a small rotation of the blade, caught the
neckline of her dress precisely in the middle. A flick of his wrist and the
silk gave way… another turn, another snag, a different motion, and he sliced
her dress cleanly halfway to her navel. The two panels fell away, exposing her
breasts.
Mycroft had seen every part of her body many times in the course of cleaning
her and supervising her medical care, and her horrific history meant that she
thought nothing of it the way a normal girl would. But the fall of her sliced
garment, framing her small, high breasts beneath the ropes wrapped just above
them, was absolutely and undeniably pornographic, and Mycroft felt his cock
twitch in his pants at the sight.
She was still frightened, deeply frightened, but her desire had outstripped it
now. He realized belatedly that whatever she had done inside of her mind to try
to cope with Mycroft’s little exercise, she had done far too well. He took in
the desperation in her eyes, the heaving of her breasts, and realized with
dismay that he felt as badly undone as she looked.
He raised the knife again, to her right breast. Placed the tip just above her
tight pink nipple.
She strained forward toward it, ineffectively. If he’d done nothing else wise
today, at least the thorough and careful bondage had turned out to be an
excellent idea. He was afraid that otherwise he’d be fucking her in a pool of
blood within the next ten minutes, his frayed and questionable morality be
damned to hell.
He pressed in, incrementally, watching her face. She gasped, then moaned.
She liked it.
Mycroft pushed the blade sideways slowly, feeling the resistance from her
epidermis. He was gauging the depth carefully, and the skin just barely parted,
a fine red line, with tiny beads of blood welling up slowly like a line of
shining red pearls.
Her eyes flickered closed and open again. “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.” It
was half under her breath, and he wasn’t sure if she was aware that she was
saying it.
He breathed slowly, moving the blade to the other side, placing it
symmetrically to the first cut so she would be sure that the second one was
coming.
“Thank you Daddy,” she murmured hoarsely before he’d even started. “Deeper this
time; make it hurt.”
He cut her again, deeper.
He wasn’t watching her face anymore, as for the moment he didn’t care about her
reaction. Instead his eyes followed the gleaming metal parting pale skin, and
this time he saw the sides of the laceration separate immediately, the deep red
fluid welling up and beginning to drip down her breast, over her hard nipple.
The sounds she was making were obscene. The sight of her blood, running in
rivulets over her puckered areola, tracking around the peaked nub of flesh in
its center, made him feel light-headed with arousal. Mycroft leaned forward and
took her nipple into his mouth, first sucking and licking the blood from her
flesh, then taking it between his teeth and tugging. In response, she thrashed
in her bonds so hard that she actually managed to rattle the legs of the heavy
chair on Mycroft’s floor.
The sounds coming from her throat deepened and intensified, and he knew exactly
what they meant. Every other time that she’d orgasmed with him, it had been her
own fingers sliding between what remained of her labia, her own touch on her
scarred clitoris bringing her off. Tonight he’d tied her to a chair.
Mycroft slid his left hand between her thighs, cupping her through the thin
fabric of her knickers. He rocked his palm side-to-side briefly, coaxing her
labia open, ensuring that the pressure from his palm would find the nub of
flesh tucked between them. Her knickers were completely sodden, and his palm
was slick as he pressed it between her legs, his teeth and tongue still
worrying her bloodied nipple.
Her orgasm was cataclysmic. He’d held her in his arms as she came undone, his
teeth buried in her skin or his thumb pressed deep into a vulnerable cluster of
nerves, ten times in the last month, but he hadn’t seen anything like this.
She’d always whimpered through them, but tonight every shred of self-awareness
was gone and she started by keening “Daddy” in a piercing cry that would have
made clear to everyone in a kilometre’s radius what was happening if Mycroft’s
flat hadn’t been sound-proofed. This devolved immediately into broken,
breathless sobbing that persisted through at least two and probably three peaks
that Mycroft managed to wring from her with the encouragement of his wrist and
palm.
He sat back again, breathing hard, and watched her coming down slowly, her
chest hitching, her head turning side to side. His cock ached badly, every
fiber of his traitorous body telling him that after that, the only thing that
he could possible do was to take her.
He tried desperately to remind himself that she was his ward, his
responsibility. That he was supposed to be taking care of her.
And yet, at the moment, it felt like he was.
His blood was pounding in his ears, and everything in the flat seemed to be in
bizarre, high relief. The sound of her slowing panting was absorbed by the
matte walls and heavy drapes, the way that her pale skin disappeared into
curved purple shadow in the dim light, the wet red gleam of smeared blood on
her pearly nipples, the shine of her eyes, watching him now.
“Do it,” she said, her voice hoarse and barely audible.
Mycroft blinked, slowly. “Do -- do what?” He sounded uncertain to his own ears.
It was not a sound that he was used to.
The girl smiled, pulling against the ropes at her wrists, wriggling her
shoulders, her breasts shifting in the light. “Do it,” she said again, firmer
this time.
He couldn’t, he wouldn’t fuck her. Thank god he’d bound her so that it was
impossible without untying her, ensuring time for sanity to reassert itself if
he tried anything so beyond the pale.
But then his hand was moving, and he didn’t know what he meant to do. The
knife, trailing up her thigh, but he didn’t open the skin. He slipped the tip
of the blade beneath the hem of her knickers and sliced the fabric on one side,
then the other.
She watched him, eyes dark with desire. Her orgasm, fantastic as it had been,
had not finished it for her. He knew why.
She could see that he wanted more.
Mycroft tugged the fabric of her knickers free. The drape of the hem of her
dress still left her in shadow, but the sharp blade parted her dress the rest
of the way down the front, and while he had to work around the ropes at her
waist, it wasn’t difficult to free the fabric and push it aside once he’d split
it.
Finally he’d fully exposing the damaged labia between her bound-apart thighs.
He’d had a reasonably detailed idea of what he would find there, having been
present for John’s examinations and having washed her himself during her first
few days with him, but he’d certainly had no reason (no excuse) to look this
closely.
A strange calm had come over him as he’d accepted that he was going this much
further than he’d meant to. This much further than he should.
She seemed to comprehend and respond to his shift in mood. It was unreal, given
the loud pumping of blood and beating of hearts that he knew was happening in
both of their bodies, but there was something both sacred and profane in the
way that they were ignoring the boundaries of decency and plunging headlong
into blood and sex. Something about it left the very air charged, perhaps with
the knowledge that if anyone else could see them, the spell would be shattered,
the secrecy of the -- the unintended, unspoken pact between them fractured.
Mycroft breathed evenly, cataloguing the damage that Moriarty had done.
“Do it, Daddy,” she said again. She didn’t sound hoarse, and she didn’t sound
like a little girl. A distant part of him noted with astonishment that she was
not merely encouraging him, not merely giving him permission, but almost…
ordering him.
Mycroft couldn’t remember the last time that someone other than his mother had
given him an order.
The knife. He was still holding the knife that he’d used to strip her naked,
the tattered remains of a very expensive silk frock tangled in the ropes
around her. The knife identical to the one that had mutilated her.
Mycroft put the tip of the knife above the V where her labia met, then traced
it down one side, over both scarred and unscarred flesh, outlining both damaged
and intact anatomy with a careful hand. Down the other side.
Into her inner labia, flowing with slick fluids.
Around the tattered edge of her clitoral hood, the edge of the blade just
scraping over the nub itself.
Down, lower, tracing the opening that led to her womb. Ridges of scar tissue,
deep divots where flesh was missing.
She was staring at him. Her body was tense from head to toe in her bonds, her
breathing tight, but nothing in her body said panic, just intense, overpowering
tension. He could still read and smell her fear, but it was not at the
forefront, not anymore. She was in no danger of losing control of herself; she
was simply desperate for him to continue.
Mycroft drew a breath, aware that he meant to speak, unsure of what was about
to come out of his mouth. It should have alarmed him -- everything about the
way that this day had spun out of his control should have alarmed him -- but it
didn’t.
“It’s… troubling, for me, that what he did to you, the state that he left you
in, makes it impossible not to meditate on one of my own most disturbing
desires.” His voice was thoughtful. The strange contrast between tranquility
and arousal was, if anything, becoming more intense.
She didn’t say anything, just continued to watch him. She'd certainly never
heard him use this... confessional tone before. Perhaps she sensed that
speaking might spook him. Perhaps that was giving the girl too much credit. He
wasn't sure any more.
Steel tracing flesh. He didn’t think she was even afraid of the knife any more.
Which was good, as he could no longer remember why he’d started all this and
what he’d meant to accomplish with it.
“To… remake a woman, here,” he said softly. “Not the way he did to you. This is
butchery, utterly uncouth. It should have been... elegant.”
He didn’t know if she knew what he meant, but she nodded as if she did, her
eyes bright as she hung on his words.
“Elegant,” he repeated. “Smooth. Labia, not mangled, but gone. All of this --”
the tip of the blade pressed into her clitoral hood, “gone. Nothing to hide
you. Nothing to obscure you. Just this here, a tidy, exposed little button to
trigger your pleasure should I chose to, and here, a slick, unprotected hole to
fill or leave empty as I like. What more than those two things should a woman
really need in my hands?”
He looked up at her face, and was stunned to see her expression. It was tender.
He could still read her desire, of course, but more than that, she looked like
a young girl in love.
His chest and throat tightened, and he couldn’t breathe.
She spoke, carefully, like she was worried about frightening him. “You said,
when you brought me here, that I would need to be -- reconstructed. That I
would need surgery, after I healed.”
He nodded. “Yes. You will.”
“And you’ll be the one in charge of it, when it happens, won’t you, Daddy?
You’ll decide who will do it, and you’ll tell them what the outcome should be?”
Mycroft closed his eyes. He held up a hand to stop the flow of her words.
It was a long moment before he could look at her, and when he did, he knew that
he was lost to whatever was about to happen.
“Whatever it is, do it, Daddy. Please.”
Mycroft didn’t know if she knew what she wanted him to do, and he didn’t know
what he intended to do. But a moment later he found himself on one knee before
her, and he felt the satisfying resistance of soft flesh parting under fine
steel, a sensation like nothing else on earth.
Three centimetres, the length of the laceration that he made. Above her labia,
above her clit, in the soft, relatively unmarred flesh of her mons. Deeper,
this one, so that blood flowed freely down, into her slit, between her labia,
and over her clitoris.
She groaned softly as he did it, her thighs trembling. He watched the ruby
fluid mingle into the slickness that already anointed her, and he knew what he
meant to do -- what she’d been begging him to do -- only a second before he was
doing it.
Mycroft leaned in and put his mouth on her. The piercing flavors of copper and
salt exploded on his tongue and went straight to his cock, making it throb
relentlessly. He could feel every scar, every divot in startling detail, and
with the very tip of his tongue he coaxed out the nub nestled in and hiding
shyly as best it could under the portion of her clitoral hood that remained to
her, using a technique he’d not practiced in... well, a long time. He declined
to calculate how long.
She came again, in his mouth this time, his tongue laving at her freely,
licking up every ounce of fluid greedily, sucking her clean as if there would
be a white glove test afterwards. Mycroft also orgasmed, in his expensive
Saville Row pants, like a boy. He had no idea what sounds he might have made,
no idea what he was doing as lights flashed behind his closed eyelids and waves
of thought-obliterating pleasure wracked his unprepared body. He didn’t know
where the knife was, didn’t know if there was any part of his brain still in
charge of what he was doing, didn’t know if he was blowing every circuit in his
mental machinery for good, didn’t know if what was happening was right or
wrong. He just… came, so hard that for a second a mental klaxon sounded
somewhere far away that he distantly knew meant that he was in danger of
passing out.
He came, with the blood and vaginal fluids of a traumatized girl on his tongue,
with her legs trying to wrap themselves over his shoulders but restrained by
the ropes he’d put on her. She was keening, and he heard the thump of wood
against carpet again as she threw her weight. He’d dropped the knife, he
realized, and his fingers were digging into the tops of her thighs, holding her
beneath his still-seeking mouth. There was still a pulsing low in his groin,
subsiding slowly. His brain was nothing but cobwebs and gelatin, but his body
was ringing clear as a bell in the wake of the stunning pleasure.
He stilled, as she did beneath his hands and mouth.
The moment stretched out, both of their bodies humming, the frequency dropping
hertz by hertz. He turned his head slightly, letting it rest on her lap, his
hands releasing their grip on her thighs and resting there lightly instead. His
legs ached from his uncomfortable position, but reality was knocking at the
door and demanding re-entrance and he knew that there would be no keeping it
out once either of them moved.
She was relaxed beneath him now, but in her immobile state there was little to
read on her until he was ready to look up at her expression. She was quiet, so
not crying, or not crying hard. She was soft.
He had been soft, for a moment, but no longer. Now he was thinking -- it was
hard, muddy, but he couldn’t stop it from happening. The strange spell of the
day had clearly disturbed his clarity of mind, warping his perception and
judgment, and then orgasm had blown it all entirely out the window. But now his
body was resolving, his pants were uncomfortably sticky, and he’d done a whole
host of things that were well beyond the pale and not in any way what he had
planned for.
Now that he could think -- unfortunately so -- he remembered exactly when and
where the knife had fallen from his fingers. He reached down and picked it up
without looking, then sat back on his heels in spite of the protests of his
thighs and lower back.
“Daddy --”
“No, Willow. Please don’t say anything.”
He didn’t look up at her as he set to work, cutting through each rope that held
her with brisk efficiency. Each ankle, each knee. Her wrists, and her elbows.
He sliced through the rope at his waist, and due to his angle he couldn’t avoid
her expression as he focused on cutting the rope that ran under her arms and
over her shoulders.
She looked worried.
“Daddy.”
“I said don’t,” he snapped, regretting the sharpness -- not now, not at her,
not right now -- but not knowing how else to ensure that she didn’t say another
word. The last rope was cut, and she would be able to free herself with minimal
effort. The ones on her legs fell away easily, but the deep ligature marks and
the accompanying bruising were already clear. They wouldn’t have been so severe
but for all her pulling, but they were, and the stab of guilt cut through the
last of the biological haze that pervaded his brain.
He had to leave. He had to get away from her. He was frightened, of himself, of
her, of the ligature marks pressed into her limbs, of the blood smeared on her
skin, of the look on her face, of the undeniable youth of her barely-developed
breasts, of her masochism, of her adoration, of her mutilated body, of what it
was all bringing out in him.
He turned and left the room, not looking back. He knew she would be bereft -
- he was not too far gone to understand that she didn’t grasp the enormous
wrongness of what he had done -- and he knew that he was wronging her again,
further, after spending all of that time cultivating her dependence and
attachment to him. But he couldn’t do anything else.
He snatched his phone and wallet with shaking hands and fled the flat, well
aware that his pants were filled with ejaculate and ignoring the shame and
discomfort that the stickiness provoked through force of will. He had other
suits at the Club. At the office. At anywhere that wasn’t his flat, anywhere
that wasn’t filled with the girl he’d stolen and groomed and abused and forced
to love him.
He had to squint to focus well enough to press the correct auto-dial. Sherlock
didn’t pick up, so he thumbed his way reluctantly into text messages and sent
one to both Sherlock and John -- Pick up NOW please.
He called again, and heard Sherlock’s voice. “Mycroft?”
“I need you at the flat. Willow needs supervision; take John with you. Now,
please, Sherlock. She’s there alone and she oughtn’t be.”
“Brother --” Sherlock hesitated, analyzing what he could from Mycroft’s tone,
then continued. “What did you do?”
Mycroft hung up, knowing that would communicate more clearly than any words he
could have used.
***** Chapter 7 *****
Mycroft sat alone in his office in the deserted Diogenes Club.
He’d not even brought his laptop with him when he fled his flat, though there
were certainly stacks of documents to which he could and should be giving his
attention. Instead a half-consumed brandy waited by his elbow -- unfortunately
not his first -- and he sat with his head in his hands, wondering what the hell
he had allowed to happen.
He was not a child. Hell, he’d barely been a child back when he’d actually been
a child. He’d neglected his needs in the urgency of his work, for sure, a state
of affairs about which his perceptive PA had been dropping unwelcome hints for
years now. After nearly four decades of hammering home to Sherlock that
attachment was a weakness, Mycroft had truly believed that it was simply his
sexual needs, the biological needs of his regrettably biological body, that he
was neglecting, and that no harm would come of it.
He would have laughed at himself, were he still the kind of man who laughed.
Willow was a child. A literal child. Brighter than average by normal standards,
but Mycroft’s personal standards were far from normal. Pretty, in a just-
ripening way that he knew that most men had a very particular response to, but
that had never mattered to him before. Warped by her horrific experiences of
the world -- far more warped than Mycroft had been by the early and brutal
heartbreak that convinced him to forego romantic endeavors altogether -- and
yet she was still able, somehow, to learn to trust again, and to trust him, of
all people. He’d carefully calculated and cultivated exactly that, and yet
somehow it still stunned him to discover what it felt like to be on the
receiving end of it.
Intoxicating. Heady. Fascinating in a way that manipulating heads of state used
to be fascinating, but often wasn’t anymore. The truth was, he thought about
her constantly when he wasn’t with her… what she might be doing and if she was
recovering as efficiently as possible, how her mental and physical education
was progressing and how he intended to handle it going forward, exactly how her
trauma had changed her psyche and how he could leverage those distortions into
what he wanted her to become in the future.
He thought about the things that he wanted to do to her for his own
gratification. Manipulating her sexual attachment to him in a way that Moriarty
had never truly achieved, so that the idea of being touched by anyone else
without his direction became repulsive to her. Exploring the limits of her
masochism, how much pain he could make her enjoy, as well as how far he could
push her beyond that without compromising her attachment to him. Remaking her
mutilated body to his own specifications. Making her healthy and happy with all
of the above. Keeping her forever.
Why hadn’t he seen any of this coming? That was perhaps the worst blow of all.
Not desiring her, not becoming attached to her, but his utter oblivion to what
was happening until he found himself in the middle of an intended
desensitization exercise with a knife in his hand and her blood and fluids on
his lips, his favorite wool trousers soiled by ejaculate.
What hadn’t he seen it coming?
“Love blinds us all, brother mine,” said Sherlock.
Mycroft startled badly, nearly knocking over his drink, and shot halfway out of
his chair before fully processing what had occurred. Sherlock’s smirk as he
strolled across the office and dropped lazily into one of the chairs was
infuriating.
It was obvious, but in his befuddlement he heard himself saying the words
anyway. “You should have set off --” 
“-- the alarms? Yes, well. Not tonight, Mycroft.”
Mycroft sat again, rubbing his palm over his face. “Sherlock, you should be
with --”
“Bollocks," Sherlock interrupted him again. "She’s with John, who’s much more
comforting than I am. I’m of greater help to her here, obviously.”
Mycroft frowned. “You’re the last person from whom I need a pep talk,
Sherlock.”
Sherlock raised a brow. “Quite the contrary, I’m exactly the person from whom
you need a pep talk. Who else is qualified?”
“That’s not what I mean. I don’t need one at all.”
“Of course you do. Otherwise you’re going to talk yourself out of going home to
the mess you’ve made.”
Mycroft felt faint color rise on the back of his neck.
“I think there’s ample evidence that my judgment has been unsound in the
matter. Andrea --”
“-- might have done a fine job if you’d handed the girl over at the outset, but
is no longer what she needs, Mycroft. You know that. You’ve ensured that.”
Mycroft sat back and crossed his arms. “What do you care, brother? This is
hardly the sort of matter that merits your attention.” He was going on the
offensive to distract Sherlock, and they would both know it, but that didn’t
mean it couldn’t work.
But Sherlock was unruffled. “Seven times,” he said mildly.
Seven? Did he mean -- ?
“Seven times,” Sherlock continued at Mycroft’s raised brow, “that you have
found me and saved my heroin-addled life in my hours of need, whether I wanted
you to or not.”
“That was different.”
“No.” Sherlock let the word hang in the air between them.
Mycroft cleared his throat. “Sherlock. I know that neither of us has ever been
accused of being over-burdened by conscience, but what I did today was
horrific. Surely even you can see that?”
“This, from a man who has killed people in cold blood. Some of whom had
families, I’m sure, families who wept for them. How much sleep have you lost
over that?”
Mycroft blinked. Sherlock had never before indicated that he had surmised that.
“I was a field agent, doing my duty in order to prove myself. Every one of
those ops had an appropriate justification.”
“This had an appropriate justification.”
“Oh really? What was that?”
“You both enjoyed it, until you lost your head and bolted on the girl.”
Mycroft blinked, stunned to hear such sentiment come out of Sherlock’s mouth.
“I -- I wasn’t sure what I was going to do next,” he heard himself confessing,
surprisingly.
“You were going to take her to your bed, where you both should have slept
soundly through the night if not for this ridiculous and unnecessary crisis of
conscience that you're manufacturing.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“How’s your lifelong insomnia been since you brought Willow home?” Sherlock’s
face made clear that he knew the answer.
“Better, obviously, but that doesn’t mean --”
“You should just get on with it and have sex with her, too. John says that she
menstruates.”
“That’s hardly --”
“Throughout human history, menses has been the signifier of sexual maturity in
young women. Age of consent laws are arbitrary expressions of silly morality
that ought not apply to anyone with a functioning brain. And her circumstances
are hardly normal anyway; it would honestly do her good.”
“Stop interrupting me, Sherlock.”Really, Mycroft didn’t know what had gotten
into his younger brother. He was acting as out of character as, well, Mycroft
himself.
Sherlock smirked again, and Mycroft felt the urge to wipe it off his face. It
was unfortunate that he was in no physical or mental state to achieve that end
at the moment.
Mycroft took a deep breath and attempted to collect himself and his thoughts.
“Sherlock, you have always made clear that this is absolutely not your area. I
fear your... advice does not come with a great deal of credibility attached
to it.”
“Just because I’m not interested in such matters myself doesn’t mean that my
perception is unsound. Yours, on the other hand, clearly is. You haven’t asked
about Willow.”
Mycroft felt his jaw tighten. Sherlock was, of course, correct, but Mycroft
couldn’t bring himself to do it. He raised his eyebrows expectantly, and was
relieved when his brother took pity on him.
“She’s terrified that you’re not coming back, My. Moriarty tortured her for
years, and she’s had exactly one month of safety in her life, and it was all
under your hand. And you took her to the absolute edge of what she could do for
you and then you abandoned her.”
Well, honestly, it didn’t sound very good when Sherlock put it like that.
There was no way around a full confession, not if Sherlock was going to
understand why Mycroft had had to do what he’d done in spite of the
consequences. “I -- I cut her, Sherlock. I hadn’t planned to; the goal was to
desensitize her to blades, not to make her phobia worse. I cut her, and I --”
Sherlock waved a hand, cutting him off. “Obvious. What on earth makes you
assume that you worsened her phobia?”
“I… cut her.”
“Yes, and then you abandoned her, so that the knife was all that she had left
of what you’d just done to her. When John and I got to your flat, she was
clinging to it as she sobbed and has absolutely refused to relinquish it. While
your execution may have gone somewhat afield, I’m quite sure that you achieved
your original goal.”
Mycroft stared at his brother, taking this in.
Wrong again, Holmes. Well done, you.
Was he a moron? Did he have a brain tumor? When had Mycroft Holmes become
stupid?
“When you came in your pants, I’d say,” Sherlock said smugly. “Clearly the fact
that you haven’t experienced orgasm with another human being in at least five
years led to a situation where it deeply compromised your mental faculties.
Hopefully it shouldn’t happen again next time.”
Next time.
Willow’s phobia hadn’t been worsened; in fact, it sounded like he’d succeeded
wildly. She wasn’t traumatized by Mycroft breaking his promise not to cut her.
She was hurt and frightened that he’d left her, and she wanted him to come
home.
Mycroft stood abruptly, reaching for his coat. Then he paused, and looked over
at his brother.
“John -- I’m quite certain that John doesn’t think much of what I’ve done.”
Sherlock also stood and straightened his Belstaff to his liking. “John isn’t
going to present an obstacle to Willow’s place in your life anymore, Mycroft.
I’ve ensured that he fully understands the situation, whether he likes it or
not.”
The brothers swept from the room together, Mycroft bemused. “I honestly have a
hard time imagining what that conversation looked like.”
“Yes, you do. But as you do know, brother mine, I have my methods.”
Mycroft reflected on the bizarre fact that it turned out that a pep talk from
his little brother appeared to have been what he needed after all. “Yes, yes
you do, don’t you?” he said wryly in response.
***** Chapter 8 *****
Mycroft was relieved when Sherlock quickly whisked John away from the flat upon
their return. Willow was pale, silent and shaking, curled up in the same chair
where Mycroft left her. She was dressed in a comfortable shirt and pants now,
and John had wrapped a blanket around her shoulders. A full cup of cold tea sat
on the table beside her, and as Sherlock had reported, Mycroft saw the glint of
metal in the hand in her lap.
He waited silently in the doorway while Sherlock and John cleared out, aware
that Willow wasn’t looking at him. Her face was blank, her eyes red from
crying. Guilt squeezed his chest uncomfortably, a foreign sensation.
Once they were alone, Mycroft approached her carefully. Her jaw tensed, but she
gave no other outward sign of awareness of his presence. He dropped to one knee
before her, raised a hand to her cheek and turned her face to him. She was
compliant, but her eyes were empty.
Mycroft took a deep breath. “I am so very sorry, my dearest heart,” he said, as
gently as he knew how.
He waited, and was relieved when her eyes slowly came into focus. It was as if
she were seeing him for the first time, and her breath suddenly hitched in her
chest, followed by a soft sob. Mycroft took both of her hands in his, the
closed Spyderco enfolded within both of their fingers now.
“I am embarrassed to admit this, but you deserve the complete truth of the
matter.” He took a deep breath, preparing to do something that he rarely did.
“I left because I was frightened, of myself and of what else I might do to you.
You, Willow, did absolutely nothing wrong.” This statement started her tears
flowing freely, but he pressed on, knowing that she needed to hear the rest of
it as well. “Quite the opposite, I am incredibly proud of you for what you
accomplished today. My response was a terrible mistake, and I promise you that
it is a mistake that I will never make again. You are mine, and I was wrong to
ask someone else to step in and take care of you. Do you understand me?”
He knew he was being clear, but he could see in her eyes how difficult it was
for her to take in what he was saying. She blinked, slowly. “You -- you’re not
mad at me? I begged you to do it, and then you were upset...”
The terrible tightness in his chest was hot and painful now. “Oh, Willow. My
dear Willow.” He pulled her hands to his mouth and kissed her knuckles. “I am
not angry at you. The only person here that I am angry at is myself. You are a
treasure and a delight, and I repayed you for that poorly today. I was -
-  Willow, I was a very poor daddy to you today, and you deserve better from
me.”
Confusion, now. Clearly she had so thoroughly convinced herself that she was at
fault for his abrupt departure that she was having a difficult time adjusting
to a new narrative. “You -- really? You’re really not angry?” Her voice dropped
off hesitantly as she added, “...Daddy?”
“Oh, sweetheart.” He simply couldn’t stand it anymore. He swept her, blanket
and all, into his arms, folding her in against his chest.
He found the noticeable differential in her weight and even her height from
three weeks ago to be a heartening reminder of the good that he had done before
his colossal misstep. She nestled into his chest, and as he carried her to bed,
he ruefully reflected that there would come a day -- perhaps before too long -
- when this would not be so easy on his aging back. Her years of malnutrition
might result in a shorter stature than she might otherwise have had, but
Mycroft judged that she still had quite a few years of healthy growth ahead of
her, so it was difficult to guess if she would be tall or not without truly
knowing her age.
He tucked her in between expensive satin sheets, then quickly changed into his
own pyjamas and joined her. She tucked up under his arm immediately, and he
smiled in the dark when he realized that she was still clutching the knife in
the hand that came up to rest on his chest.
Perhaps the day had not been a complete failure on his part after all.
===============================================================================
Several months later, Mycroft stood beside the bed in a secure surgical unit,
watching with a close eye as the anesthesiologist carefully placed a needle
into Willow’s vein.
In the intervening time, the girl’s progress had continued to surpass his
predictions. She had put on another stone, shot up another five centimetres,
was running four kilometers a day on the treadmill, and was reading at the
level of a year eleven student. She had also made it from the flat to the car
in the garage, and from the garage into the facility, with no sign of a panic
attack, in spite of the fact that Moriarty was still on the loose. She’d been
clinging to Mycroft’s side the entire way, eyes wide, but as long as he had his
arm around her shoulders she showed no more signs of anxiety than a slightly
elevated heart rate.
But more than that, she was beginning to relax. Andrea was often able to engage
her in conversation when she was at the flat now, about intentionally normal
topics that were beyond Mycroft’s ken, such as how women cared for their hair
and bodies, or the changing place of girls and women in the modern world, or
the details of the school system that Willow had never experienced. Sherlock
and John came by occasionally, and John chatted with her during her check-ups
about how she thought she was doing in recovery, and various musings that John
entertained about possible futures for her.
Willow had once in a while had the opportunity to watch television during her
years before Moriarty, so she was not entirely ignorant about the normal world,
but it had been limited, and it turned out that she had a lot of questions once
she was sure that she was allowed to ask them. And yet, she still only brought
them to Mycroft when he opened the topic himself, allowing him to remain
entirely in control of how much conversation they shared within their little
world of the Pall Mall flat. He gave her a laptop and headphones via which she
was allowed to watch an allotment of movies and television shows vetted by
Andrea, as even Mycroft had to admit that they provided a window into normality
that wasn’t accessible through reading alone.
Mycroft had waited until the night before her surgery to inform her that it was
time, and to explain the anesthesia process to her. She had listened closely,
but asked no questions about the details of what the actual, physical outcome
of the surgery would be. She gave him a strangely knowing look, and Mycroft
felt sure that the display of trust was quite deliberate.
Yet again, he was taken aback by the fierceness of his pleasure and
satisfaction in her acquiescence to his control and authority. He seriously
considered telling her what he had decided, but found that once he was sure
that she fully understood the implications of not asking, he preferred to
withhold the answer.
That night he put his hands and his mouth all over her, as he had begun doing
freely since his ill-planned desensitization exercise had gone so awry. While
he’d declined Sherlock’s suggestion that he should abandon all decorum with
regards to her sexuality, the truth was that he was fairly sure that the
intensified bonding was part of the reason that her progress was so rapid. And
god knew that Mycroft enjoyed sinking his teeth into her breasts, now, or her
inner thighs, when the whim took him. A firm tug on her hair or a hard tweak of
her nipple were equally effective cues to bring the full force of her masochism
raging to the surface, and the girl was never so unguarded with her tongue as
after she had begun begging him to hurt her. He had memorized every detail of
her ravaged genitals with both his fingertips and his tongue, the better to
appreciate and document how improved she would be by his intervention.
At the surgical facility, Mycroft watched Willow’s face closely as her eyelids
fluttered closed and her muscles relaxed. After two minutes he was satisfied
that she was appropriately insensate, and he turned his eyes to the surgical
team standing ready.
“I believe I’ve adequately explained the stakes of the outcome of today’s
procedure for each of you, both professionally and personally, have I not?” he
asked in his very coldest voice.
“Yes, sir,” the head surgeon replied quickly, the tightness around her eyes
affirming for Mycroft that the message had fully penetrated.
Mycroft let his eyes pass over each of their faces in turn, fleetingly. He
needed no more than a fraction of a second to remind them that he knew in
exquisite detail who they were. All but one of them looked exactly the right
degree of intimidated, with the final one perhaps just a hair more than was
ideal for steady hands. Mycroft would keep an extra close eye on him from his
vantage point in the observation room next door, and was ready to replace him
at a moment’s notice with one of the back-up staff waiting nearby.
The surgery went swimmingly… no one had expected anything else, not with the
team that Mycroft had carefully assembled and prepared. Many hours later the
girl was in recovery, sleeping peacefully.
She would need to stay under medical care for a few days if all went well, and
Mycroft resented every one of them. The remote and expensive facility ensured
that the environment for her recovery was more like a home than a hospital, and
Mycroft had had many familiar items brought from the flat, from the bedding
that he had used most frequently during her time with him to some of his
artwork to replace what was on the walls, and he ensured that they kept the
lighting low at all times. He’d been concerned that a strange or hostile
environment would set back her recovery from her post-traumatic symptoms, and
he ensured that he would be able to stay with her for the first days, sleeping
beside her in the queen-sized bed where she lay connected to IV and catheter.
Accordingly he was beside her when she woke, and irrational relief flooded
through him when she slowly opened her eyes. She’d never been in any danger,
and yet he couldn’t deny how relieved he was to see her awake.
Her hand fluttered on the blanket. “Daddy?”
Mycroft took her hand. “I’m right here, Willow. Everything went very well.
You’re recovering beautifully already.”
She was clearly having a hard time focusing, and when she did it was on him.
Her fingers tightened around his.
“Are you happy, Daddy?”
“I am very pleased, Willow. Proud of you, and pleased with how the surgery
went. I watched the entire procedure, and the doctor was very, very good.
You’re going to be lovely.”
She gazed up at him sleepily. “Thank you, Daddy. For helping me.”
A smile touched his lips. “You’re welcome, Willow.”
She opened her eyes again, wider this time, struggling to stay awake, to
express herself. “No, Daddy. I mean it. Not just this. I mean, thank you. I’ve
never said thank you, I’ve been too frightened. You took me away from
him. You’ve done everything for me. Everything.”
Mycroft gazed at her for a moment, contemplating. Most people would think he
ought to be punished for the things he had done to this girl, jailed at minimum
and quite possibly hanged at the gibbet. But she was entirely sincere, and had
never had reason to thank any human being in her life for anything that had
been done to her before the day that Mycroft found her.
For once, he didn’t have to manufacture warmth in his eyes, or in his tone.
“You’re welcome, Willow. And I mean it.” And he meant it.
She healed well, and quickly. Mycroft marveled at youth and health, which had
receded from him over the years. She had been such a broken, small thing when
he found her, but it was astounding the rate at which she was becoming
stronger. Strong, even, in her own way.
Sometimes it haunted him now, the question of whether she might heal so
quickly, become so whole that she no longer needed him. Andrea had been
expressing the belief throughout Willow’s recovery that the girl still had a
chance at normality, and Mycroft was loathe for his PA to notice that the idea
filled him with dread, not relief.
Willow still didn’t ask about what was healing between her legs. She simply
followed directions, and read the novels and books that Mycroft placed in her
hands, watched the media that Andrea approved, helped him cook their meals, and
got back on the treadmill at a sedate pace as soon as she was allowed. As soon
as he brought her back to the flat he tucked her under his arm again at night,
but he didn’t dare to hurt her when she was in such a vulnerable state, and he
could tell that she was chafing without it. That reassured him.
John did Willow’s aftercare and check-ups, a fact which infuriated her surgeon,
but Mycroft had so much clout that he needn’t worry about that. Whatever
Sherlock had said to his flatmate had done its job… John Watson might still
disapprove of Mycroft’s relationship with his ward in carefully veiled looks,
but not a word passed his lips to suggest as much. He peered between Willow’s
legs thoughtfully, administered a course of preventative antibiotics, and
reassured them both that the girl would be “better than new” within six weeks
of her surgery.
The catheter came out when she left the surgical facility, and John removed the
final iteration of her bandages at the two week mark. She was still severely
swollen and bruised, but Mycroft was moved by the simplicity of what he saw.
She was so much more straightforward than any of the women of his youth, and so
trusting in her acceptance of his decision.
In the following month he felt sure -- well, almost sure -- that she peered at
the aftermath of the surgery. Did she? Was her trust in him so complete? Was it
possible that she could accept any outcome -- that he had had her reconstructed
to the female norm, or to his ideal, or to something in between?
It was a long month, without the sadomasochistic interactions that they’d both
come to find so soothing, but it gave Mycroft time to reflect, and he knew that
it did the same for his young charge. She was filling out quickly. It had been
a mere three months since the day that Andrea announced to Mycroft that they’d
been unsuccessful in cornering Moriarty but successful in acquiring his pet,
and Mycroft now knew that his little brother and the criminal mastermind were
nearly ready to begin their endgame.
But there was a moment that needed to occur first, he also knew. By now, he had
promised Sherlock his prize -- the freedom to take Moriarty down by his own
methods. After the ways in which Moriarty had made it personal with Sherlock,
going all the way back to Carl Powers, Mycroft could not deny his little
brother. But given what he’d put Willow through, Mycroft could not deny her a
reckoning of her own, either.
Mycroft knew that it was almost time to bring Moriarty in. Willow needed to be
ready; she needed to be the right kind of whole, the right kind of intact. She
was the one who had given Mycroft the details, the places, the view out the
window that would allow him to bring Moriarty to heel and thus feed him exactly
the information that Sherlock wanted fed to him. But until Moriarty was dead,
this was the best that Mycroft could offer her -- Sherlock and Willow couldn’t
both put a bullet in his brain, and Mycroft didn’t believe that that was the
best way forward for his ward anyway. For Sherlock, perhaps… time would tell.
For Willow, it was something else that was needed.
And she needed to be ready, if she was going to get the closure that she needed
before Sherlock finished it.
***** Chapter 9 *****
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
It had been several weeks since Willow’s healing genitals had required
dressing, but they’d not spoken of nor acknowledged it directly.
He didn’t intend for her to know about it when this day came, but somehow in
their time together she had begun to read him, sometimes, in a way that no one
other than Sherlock or Andrea had ever been able to before. Nothing in the
activities of their Saturday morning or afternoon should have been a giveaway,
but by the time that he laid out her dress for dinner, she was watching him
curiously.
There was no point nor need to dissemble, really. He simply hadn’t wanted her
to be anxious. “After dinner, we will look together. Then we have an important
outing this evening.”
“Yes, Daddy,” she said demurely, then disappeared into the en suite.
Mycroft still cooked for them much more often than he had managed for himself
before he brought Willow home, but doing so every night was untenable given his
obligations to his work. Andrea kept them fed on the evenings when work
interfered, but tonight Mycroft rolled up his shirtsleeves and took down the
Misono.
Willow joined him promptly, hair tied prettily away from her face with a velvet
ribbon, and took over sous-chefing… she wasn’t as fast as he was after his
years of practice, but under his watchful eye she was getting faster, and she
didn’t show even a hint of lingering squeamishness around blades.
After dinner Mycroft took Willow back to the bedroom. He placed a chair
directly in front of the full-length mirror that stood beside his wardrobe, and
indicated it with a jerk of his chin.
She knew what he wanted. She sat, legs parted, the drape of the skirt between
her knees all that concealed her from her own view and his.
He stood behind her and put his hands on her shoulder. He could feel a tremor
there, but it was subtle. He carded his fingers into her curls, scratching
lightly, and she relaxed beneath him.
“Are you ready to see yourself, Willow?”
She took a deep breath and met his eyes in the mirror. “Yes, Daddy.”
Mycroft leaned forward over her and grasped the fabric between her knees,
drawing it lightly up her thighs.
Willow’s eyes were bright and focused as she watched, and Mycroft felt a
flutter in his stomach. There. She was exposed, her slim thighs spread, and
they both looked thoughtfully at the altered -- corrected -- anatomy between
her legs.
She reached down, running her fingers over herself exploratively, discovering
what Mycroft had decided her body should be like. Watching this aroused him
painfully, but he clamped down hard on the reaction. There was no time for that
now. They had things to accomplish tonight, and this wasn’t about him. He
didn’t intend to allow a repeat of the desensitization fiasco.
He didn’t rush her though, simply watching with slightly parted lips as her
fingertips explored her new contours. She parted her legs further, dipping her
fingers inside of herself. She was clearly, extraordinarily aroused, he could
see, but she didn’t seem to expect to do anything about it. She just stared in
fascination at herself, fingers circling, sliding, touching.
He wanted to touch her as well, but it wasn’t time for that either.
Eventually she shook her head and met his eyes in the mirror.
“Thank you, Daddy,” she said in a breathless voice. “It’s beautiful.”
Mycroft smiled. “You’re welcome, Willow.”
She stood and turned toward him expectantly, and he took her hand. Her fingers
were slick, but it was a slickness that proved how much she liked having a body
that he’d chosen for her, and in that context he found the sensation...
gratifying.
“It’s time to go,” he said calmly, and she nodded.
He bundled her into the car, and she sat silent beside him, pressed against his
side. She was trembling slightly, and Mycroft suspected that she knew exactly
where they were going. How could she know? Perhaps she was simply nervous about
being outside of the flat.
Probably she knew.
As at the surgical facility, they exited the vehicle inside of an underground
garage, so that she never had to deal with being exposed, outside. The security
here was extraordinarily high, so there was no outside to be had anyway.
Andrea greeted them at the door, waving it open with her own ID.
“Good evening, sir. Good evening, Willow. You look lovely tonight.”
“Thank you,” the girl said, her voice nearly steady.
They escorted her through a series of corridors. The facility was bright and
clinical, with fluorescent lighting and aggressively white walls. It was not at
all like the mahogany halls of power that Mycroft walked at work, or the
soothing earth tones of the hospital where she’d had her surgery.
Eventually Andrea paused outside of a huge, heavily secured steel door.
Mycroft turned Willow so that they were facing each other. He brushed her hair
back from her forehead, tucking a strand that had escaped her ribbon back
behind her ear. She looked back nervously, chewing on her lower lip.
“Do you understand who is inside of this room?” Mycroft asked.
She took a deep breath and nodded. He could see now that she hadn’t been sure,
not until now, but she’d suspected. He could see it in her eyes.
“And you have thought about how you want to handle this… conversation?”
Again, a nod.
“He is under our control. He cannot get free and he cannot hurt you. I will be
beside you the entire time. You may approach him if you wish, but you do not
have to. And you are… free, entirely free, both to say what you like and to do
what you like, as long as he’s still breathing when we leave this room.”
“Yes, Daddy.” His words seemed to fortify her, and she straightened up and
lifted her chin, which Mycroft chucked affectionately. Willow took another deep
breath, got the shaking under control, and nodded.
Mycroft nodded at Andrea, who waved her card in front of the reader, opening
the door.
Willow entered the room without any hesitation. Inside was a single heavy metal
chair, bolted to the concrete floor. In the chair sat James Moriarty, his
wrists chained behind it, his ankles shackled to its legs. He was dressed in a
grimy t-shirt and jeans, his feet bare, his hair caked with filth, but he was
grinning widely.
“Ah, my little pet! I had so hoped they would bring you to see me!” Moriarty
cackled, rattling his chains.
Willow stood silently before him, studying the man who had tortured her for
three years. Mycroft positioned himself to the side, where he could observe
both her face and Moriarty’s limited movements without being a distraction in
her line of sight.
“Darling, come give Daddy a kiss!” Moriarty crooned. “A cuddle? Climb onto my
lap, little pet. I know you’ve missed Daddy so.”
She didn’t flinch at his words. She simply looked at him, narrowing her eyes
slightly at Moriarty’s claim to the title that Mycroft had usurped from him so
easily. For perhaps the first time since he’d taken her, Mycroft found himself
wondering what it was that she was thinking. Her face was impassive. He’d seen
her dissociate, but this was different. He hadn’t known that she was capable of
it, hadn’t seen it from her before.
“Why so quiet, pet?” Moriarty needled. “I’m going to think you didn’t miss me
after all. What has the nasty Ice Man done to you, eh? That’s a pretty dress,
but I think you know that it doesn’t suit you as well as bruised and bleeding
nudity does.”
“I’m whole now,” she said. Mycroft heard her voice waver, which meant that
Moriarty would too.
Indeed the Irishman did, grinning. “Oh, that’s rich. How rich is that? Did the
Ice Man convince you of that? You’ve been had, honey. Didn’t you know?”
Willow took two measured steps forward. She was now close enough to reach out
and touch him if she wanted, and he had to tilt his head back slightly to look
up at her. She took a deep breath. “I am whole now,” she said again. This time
her voice was steady. “I’m whole, in spite of everything. In spite of
everything that you did to me.”
Moriarty narrowed his glittering eyes. “You misunderstand the word, pet. You
can’t make something whole when you only have half the pieces left.”
Face still strangely inscrutable, Willow held a hand out toward Mycroft.
Moriarty was still pretending to mirth, but Mycroft noted the way his eyes
followed Willow’s movement. The Irishman wasn’t as certain of her harmlessness
as he pretended to be.
Mycroft pulled a folding knife out of the inner pocket of his jacket and handed
it to Willow. The girl was moving slowly, and Mycroft was impressed that her
hand didn’t shake as she took the knife and thumbed open the blade, with its
soft but distinctive click.
She glanced at the knife, then at Mycroft.
“This isn’t yours,” she said softly. Then, with quickly dawning understanding:
“This is his.”
Mycroft gave her a small smile.
Moriarty rattled his chains again to get her attention. “And just what do you
plan to do with that, sweetling? Nothing as fun as what I’ve done with it, I
feel sure.”
She tilted her head, as if considering the answer to his question. Then she
leaned forward, grabbed the waist of his jeans, pulled it away from his body,
and started sawing at it.
The knife wasn’t made for this sort of task -- this was why they’d invented EMT
shears after all -- but half of the length of the blade was serrated, and she
was able to get the job done with a little determination. Moriarty squirmed
slightly but made little noise as she sawed haphazardly through the denim, and
after a couple of moments she had the fly cut out right down through the
crotch, the shredded fabric fallen away to expose his half-hard cock.
“You have missed me,” Moriarty sang saucily, though Mycroft was satisfied to
detect a note of actual alarm that he was attempting to conceal in his voice.
Willow ignored him, stepping back a bit to look at what she’d done. She didn’t
seem bothered by his tumescence.
Moriarty thrust his hips what little he could in his restrained state, leering.
“Well, climb on, then. Let’s show the Ice Man how you really like it.”
Mycroft saw a look of anger pass over Willow’s pretty face like a shadow, but
it was gone as quickly as it had appeared, and in its wake she seemed amused.
Mycroft saw Moriarty tense.
But instead of assaulting him, she reached down and grabbed the hem of her own
frock, lifting it over her head and dropping it onto the concrete floor by her
feet. She wasn’t wearing knickers, and in the space of a breath her entire body
was exposed.
Mycroft staunched his own reaction to the sight -- Moriarty didn’t need the
information -- but he was surprised. Then, as he took in Willow’s body language
-- confident, defiant -- he wasn’t surprised at all.
She was beautiful, exactly as he’d intended.
All of Moriarty’s bruises had healed, and the extensive scars he’d left had all
been minimized by the reducing cream that Mycroft had been using on her
religiously for three months. Willow was more than an inch taller, and had put
on well over a stone. Her small breasts were fuller, and her waist-to-hip ratio
had changed considerably. Her hair was healthy and conditioned and trimmed, her
nails clean and polished, her complexion clear. Her nipples crinkled in the
cool air of the concrete cell. One of Mycroft’s own livid bites was the only
mark on her long, creamy body at the moment, on her left breast.
Her mons was smooth all the way down between her thighs, surgically shaven
bare. The nub of her clitoris was visible, entirely exposed, nestled just
underneath a tidy ridge where the ragged remains of her clitoral hood had once
been. Without outer or inner labia, the introitus of her vagina was a visible
valley. There wasn’t a single visible scar.
Moriarty looked taken aback. He hid it quickly, but not quickly enough. Mycroft
noticed, and he was certain that Willow did as well.
She stared down at him contemptuously.
“I told you, Jim, I’m whole now,” she said. The knife was still in her hand
after disrobing, and Mycroft was suddenly entirely sure that she intended to
use it.
“You will never --” Moriarty begin to spit.
Those were the words that he got out before Willow leaned forward. She grabbed
Moriarty’s half-hard cock roughly by his swollen purple glans, pulling it away
from his groin, and…
She sank the gleaming blade of the custom Spyderco Delica between the two
corpora cavernosa of Moriarty’s penis, the tip of the blade impacting the metal
of the chair hard enough to blunt it considerably.
Moriarty howled, long and loud. Mycroft declined to wince at the noise,
watching impassively as blood began to spurt, splattering on Willow’s arm and
her bare torso.
The girl stepped back quickly, relinquishing her hold on his anatomy and
keeping the knife, not seeming the least bit disturbed by what she’d just done.
Because Moriarty had been somewhat engorged, blood spurted all the way onto her
chin and chest, but she merely stood watching impassively as he bled and
screamed.
Mycroft stepped forward. He put a hand on Willow’s bare shoulder, drawing her
attention.
“I think that’s enough, don’t you?” he said, just loudly enough to be heard
over the anguished sounds that Moriarty was making.
At the moment, he wasn’t sure if he would have let Willow proceed with further
torture or not. He had promised Sherlock his reckoning, and he’d need to get
the madman into the on-site OR if he was going to avoid bleeding out while in
custody.
Willow just gave him a strange look, bent over to retrieve her dress, and
strode out of the room as she pulled it over her head. Mycroft followed,
leaving Andrea on clean up with a look.
Willow stalked through the halls of the facility. Mycroft trailed on her heels,
garnering double-takes from long-time staff who had never seen Mycroft Holmes
trailing after another human being. Her blood-stained state may have
contributed to the looks as well.
He knew that she knew that he was there, but it was clear that in this moment
she was in charge of herself, and he found a knot forming in his stomach at the
thought.
She led him back to the car, where she opened her own door and crawled in
before him, again new behavior. As Mycroft seated himself beside her, breathing
in the comforting smell of expensive leather, Willow leaned forward toward the
driver.
“St. James Park, please,” she instructed. The driver caught Mycroft’s eyes in
the rearview mirror, and he raised an eyebrow at her expectantly.
It was almost an hour from the facility on the outskirts of London back into
the centre of town. Willow sat silently in her pretty velvet dress, her right
arm, chest and face splattered liberally with drying blood.
The driver parked at the east end of the park, across from Downing Street, and
Willow slid out of the car and into the open, exposed evening air. It was
literally the first time that he’d ever seen her outdoors, and probably the
first time she’d been outdoors since the last time Moriarty had dragged her
along in his travels, which according to Mycroft’s intelligence was now over
six months ago.
It occurred to him that, in a sense, this moment was her first moment of true
freedom. Or possibly it had been seventy-six minutes ago, when she’d sunk a
knife through Moriarty’s most intimate anatomy so hard it bounced off the metal
chair beneath. It was difficult to be sure, as her mood was still somewhat
opaque to him at the moment.
Mycroft felt certain of only one thing: that this change in her demeanor was a
positive step, a positive sign of her recovery and healing. He strongly
suspected a second thing: that this step might not be so positive for him.
Either way, she spent a long moment simply standing beside the car, looking
around her, taking in the ducks and pelicans on the edge of the water, the
imposing facades of Whitehall across the street.
“I suppose you haven’t really seen much of London,” Mycroft mused. He was
standing near her but not touching her, aware that she wasn’t leaning toward
him as she normally did when he was physically close by.
“Not really.” Her voice was pensive. “Nothing I was ever meant to appreciate,
anyway. Westminster is that way?” She pointed with her chin in the correct
direction. This did not surprise Mycroft, whose supervision of her internet use
had made him aware that she spent a great deal of time on Google maps,
exploring the geography of London or of other locations that had caught her
interest, presumably in a book or movie.
She led them on a meandering path through the park, then around Westminster
Abbey and Parliament and south along the Thames. He may not have fully
understood what she was thinking, but he was quite certain of what he was
witnessing: the little girl that he’d rescued, healed, and reconstructed had
decided for herself that her world no longer needed to be limited to the safe
haven that Mycroft provided for her in Pall Mall. The knot in his stomach grew
tighter, and he felt tension in his shoulders as he walked beside her.
Willow climbed the steps to one of the benches in Victoria Tower Gardens, a
triangular patch of green snugged up against the river below Parliament. There
he watched her gazing glassy-eyed across the brown water of the Thames, taking
in the lights of London. It was a city where she’d spent three long years being
physically, sexually and psychologically tortured, and they would probably
never know where she’d come from before the abduction that had eventually put
her in James Moriarty’s path.
“I suppose London must be home as much as anywhere can be,” she finally mused,
as if she’d heard what he was thinking.
“Based on your life so far, that’s true. But it is up to you where you’d like
your home to be going forward.” Mycroft was uncomfortably aware of his heart
rate increasing at the topic. They’d never exchanged a single word on what her
life might be like in the future, not since Mycroft’s early reassurances that
she would be allowed to stay in his home until she decided for herself to
leave.
At that time, he’d had no idea how attached he would become to the outcome of
her decision. Willow glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, and he
wondered if she knew that he wasn’t nearly as calm as his facade suggested.
“How could I ever go anywhere else? I don’t have money, or ID.” The question
didn’t actually sound plaintive, and he was painfully aware that what he was
hearing was actually a test, not an inquiry.
“Those can both be easily rectified,” he said evenly.
“How could I have an ID? I don’t even have an identity.” Now there was an edge
to her voice, definitely real, not feigned.
“Of course you do.”
She snorted. “Willow,”she said derisively.
There was a sharp pang in his chest. Once, what seemed like a very long time
ago, when he had earned those very first words from her, he had asked her what
her name was, and then asked her if she wanted to keep it. In response she had
asked if he liked it, and decided to keep it only after affirming his approval
of it.
“If you don’t care for the name that your original captors gave you, then you
should choose another,” Mycroft said. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that,
but neither did he want her saddled with a name that she disliked. “I’ll have
some appropriate ID and a credit card established for you in whatever name you
like.”
“Any name I ever have will just be made up, whether it’s Willow or something
else.”
“Everyone’s name is ‘just made up.’”
Again, the sideways look. “Yours isn’t.”
“Certainly it is. It was simply ‘made up’ a much longer time ago.”
Obviously the thought hadn’t occurred to her quite that way, and she considered
it for a moment.
“Do you know what it means? Your name?” she asked.
“It refers to someone who lives in a small, enclosed field, next to a holly
tree, at the mouth of a stream.”
His bland recitation made her laugh, and for a moment Mycroft’s heart
lightened. You’ve become beholden to the whims and moods of a girl who you know
to be at least three years shy of adulthood, and who could outgrow you and
leave you at any moment, he thought to himself, half in disgust and half in
amazement, and made sure that the thought did not show in a twist of his mouth.
“But none of those are true of you!” she protested.
“No. You know, I’ve never asked my parents about their insistence on giving us
surnames as our given names. I’ve never been sure that I want to know what they
were thinking.”
His words turned her head, and he gave her a small smile as she studied him,
waiting to see where her mind would go next.
“It’s difficult to imagine you as a child. But you were my age once.”
“Indeed I was. It seems a very long time ago now, and things were very
different then. I came from a very different situation than you do.”
Her eyes, still on him, narrowed thoughtfully. It was clear that she was
formulating another question.
“Had anyone ever hurt you when you were my age? I don’t mean hurt your
feelings… I mean, had anyone ever really hurt you?”
Mycroft hesitated, and Willow’s eyes widened immediately. The honest answer to
her question would involve revealing a truth that, until this moment, no one
else in the entire world had known, and one that he’d previously intended to
take to his grave.
But then, he had never seen any of this coming. Not Willow, not her
rehabilitation, and certainly not the profound effects that it would have on
them both to go through it together.
Willow was still waiting on his answer, her heart clearly in her throat. He had
lied to her before, plenty of times, but he found that he could not now. “It
seems crass to contrast any run-of-the-mill family trauma to the extended,
sadistic hell that you endured, my dear girl. But since you ask…” Mycroft
paused uncertainly. “Yes. I had an uncle who hurt me when I was young, younger
than you are now.”
“Once, or more than once?” she asked. Her voice was so low as to barely be
audible, though there was no one else in the park at this hour and they were in
the open where no one had any reason to expect him to be. He felt confident
that their conversation was genuinely private, or he would never have confided
in her.
“More than once.” He heard how flat his voice had gone.
“Physically, or sexually?”
“I don’t think he particularly meant to hurt me physically, but neither did he
seem to care that he did.”
“Then sexually?”
“Yes, Willow. That’s right.” Mycroft raised an eyebrow at her. “Tell me, why
are you asking me about this?”
“To see if you’d answer.” She didn’t seem abashed by this, and Mycroft’s mouth
twitched.
Testing. This was all testing.
It made sense, really. In the wake of reducing the object of her terror, she
was trying to figure out how she now perceived Mycroft’s power over her.
In order to confront her abuser, she’d found within herself -- she’d cultivated
-- a source of strength, of self-directed agency. She’d known that she would
need it; she’d known that there was one room in the world in which she could
not rely on drawing her strength from Mycroft, not if she wished to emerge
intact, and that was the room that they’d just visited. But now, now that she
had cultivated that strength, she still had access to it, didn’t she? It was
hers, all hers. And yet here they were, still with her future, and therefore
the future of the strange life he’d built for them, to navigate.
Mycroft didn’t like the fear and anxiety that her testing was stirring up in
him. He didn’t like it at all. He’d spent twenty years being tested by his
superiors, his peers and his underlings as he ruthlessly clawed his way up the
ladder of power, stepping on the heads of those below as he ascended without
losing a second of sleep about it. He’d spent his entire life being tested by
his petulant little brother. And now a little girl was going to be the one to
get under his skin?
Apparently so.
Mycroft took a deep breath and turned toward her.
“What name would you like me to put on your ID, Willow?” he asked, putting just
the slightest edge in his voice to ensure that she understood that he was
running out of patience with the game that she was playing.
A couple of months ago that voice would have made her cringe. Tonight she just
raised her eyebrows in response.
“Elizabeth Sophia Holmes,” she responded calmly.
Mycroft blinked.
He blinked a second time, and that was when he noticed that his mouth was
hanging slightly open although he didn’t recall opening it.
He closed his mouth and blinked again, then looked out over the Thames,
blankly.
“Oh,” he said.
“Do you like it?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
She didn’t seem to have anything else to say after that.
After a few moments of sitting silent and dazed by his own emotions on the
riverside, Mycroft rose and was relieved and gratified when the girl -- Willow?
Elizabeth? -- followed suit obediently.
 
Chapter End Notes
     One more chapter to go, friends! (And perhaps an epilogue to put a
     bow on top?)
     Chapter 10 will basically just be porn. My goal is to have this story
     finished by the end of October.
Please drop_by_the_archive_and_comment to let the author know if you enjoyed
their work!