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Language:
English
Series:
Part 2 of Glimpses
Stats:
Published:
2026-05-02
Words:
818
Chapters:
1/1
Kudos:
8
Hits:
103

Patch

Summary:

Moriarty is seated on the lid of the toilet and picking debris out of Sebastian's wound. They have a doctor—the kind that knows to keep their mouth as he's been assured before—but Moriarty insisted on dragging him by his arm to the bathroom without a single word. Just a look.

Notes:

Got tired of looking at this in my drafts.

Work Text:

Moriarty is seated on the lid of the toilet and picking debris out of Sebastian's wound. They have a doctor—the kind that knows to keep their mouth as he's been assured before—but Moriarty insisted on dragging him by his arm to the bathroom without a single word. Just a look. One of those Sebastian saw too infrequently to get a handle on, when he stumbled through the front door clutching himself. 

Lazily, Moriarty had craned his head up from the couch, and the distance made it hard to tell but he thought he saw his eyes flare. In that next instant, Sebastian was in the hallway trying to keep up, boots stomping a clumsy rhythm into the now-dirty hardwood floor. 

“Hey, it was an accident,” he offered with shortened, growling breath, less as an explanation and more in self preservation; without knowing where this was headed, he at least had to attempt something to assuage it. But Sebastian fell hard onto his knees after barely crossing into the bathroom, the backs of them weakened and stinging from Moriarty's callous kick. The reactive groan had come dangerously close to an undignified yelp. 

What the fuck is your problem? is a rhetorical question when it came to Moriarty, and not one he took kindly to, either.

So, rather than swearing and turning to glower at him, he took the hint and rolled until he was sitting cross-legged on the tile. Meanwhile, Moriarty fished around for supplies.

That was how he ended up with his arm on Moriarty's thigh, and with his blood pooling onto his suit. The room filled with high pitched ringing as bits of metal were unceremoniously flicked onto the counter after extraction. 

When he wasn't studying the other's unreadable expression fixated on his wound, he noticed how much his blood polluted their surroundings. Soaked into fabric, dripped onto the rug, coating Moriarty's cautious fingers, splattered across the countertop. Did marble stain easily?

When Moriarty closed on him in the foyer, his eyes almost seemed to smolder with something. Before, of course, the shutters dropped and left him with the vacuous face he looked at now. Half-moons from Moriarty's nails littered the arm he snatched and only just started to prickle as his gash oozed less, hurt less. Making sense of it failed, not having a inkling of what was running through Moriarty’s brain swelled in his throat. 

It's anger. If he had to guess. 

He stopped picking at the rug with his free hand upon realizing he was doing it. 

By now, Sebastian had returned from jobs with nearly everything under the sun: bruised ribs, broken bones, torn nail beds, varying degrees of lacerations that had equally varying makers, and while Moriarty was never too pleased, he would make a passing comment about needing to find a better sniper on his way to the car. If it wasn’t dire, Sebastian would be tossed the keys while he slid into the backseat to be left alone with his nose in his phone. 

He would hover while the doctor worked, though.

Granted, it’s been a while since he’s come back with anything disinfectant, ice, or a bandage couldn’t fix, but Moriarty has never done this. 

Neither did it warrant this; dirty and in need of stitches as it may be, Sebastian definitely considered the wound fairly tame. Work as usual, par for the course. He could be halfway through the drive back from the doctor in the time Moriarty was taking with it. 

If it is anger, it’s far from his usual searing-hot brand of it. 

Sebastian couldn’t bring himself to open his mouth again, not with the way the tweezers carefully canvassed his wound, deliberately not poking or prodding anything that wasn’t foreign matter. Sebastian hadn’t flinched once. He lacked any frame of reference for what this was and it was starting to get to him, nor was he sure if his head could think of anything to say with the edges of it dissolving into a woozy haze, his breath coming uneven and loud to his own ears. Looking anywhere else threatened to make him dizzy, so returned to staring straight at Moriarty. 

He saw his eyebrows twitch. 

Sebastian grunted and gritted his teeth when the antiseptic came out, accompanied by sharp stabs from the instrument holding the cotton round, and only when he dropped his head and closed his eyes from the pain did things seem to get less heavy-handed. 

After that, he stayed perfectly still. A feverish, fluttering sensation assaulted his chest, sour and bitter and anxious. Aside from a few rough exhales, the rest of the procedure passed quietly. After the final piece of tape secured a tight cast of gauze, picked his head up and watched Moriarty leave promptly. The bathroom was a mess. He sunk against the sink.

The next morning, he drove himself to the doctor for those stitches.

 

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