Jim, where are you? –SM
Turn on your bloody phone, Jim. –SM
Coming home for dinner tonight? –SM
I miss you. Come home. –SM
Sebastian hits the Send button and drops his Samsung Galaxy Nexus into the right pocket of his overcoat. He adjusts the lapels, straightens his tie, and raises his hand to rap his knuckles on the door before remembering, no one's home. No one else here.
He fumbles for his keys, and finally finds them in his left trouser pocket, attached to a little key-chain of a skull, courtesy of Jim. The keys turn smoothly in the lock, and he sighs to himself, throwing off his woolen coat and shrugging off the sniper strapped across his shoulders. The blond drops tiredly into a leather armchair, and wishes desperately for an intoxicant. Anything really, just so the thoughts running through his head won't be so clear, but Jim got rid of all the alcohol in the flat after Seb was once too hung over to shoot straight.
Sebastian feels the weight of a long day, and with blood pounding in his ears on the verge of a headache, he closes his blue eyes and begins to nod off in front of the unlit fireplace. Eyelids heavy in the slightly chilly room, he doesn't notice when his shoes are slipped off, the Prada leather put carefully away. Nor when his McQueen tie, a gift and a match to Jim's is un-knotted, and a thick fleece blanket is draped lovingly around him. Oblivious, he slumbers on, and doesn't wake till morning.
The sunlight is just beginning to prickle the backs of Sebastian's eyelids, and the flat smells of freshly steeped Earl Grey. There's a clatter in the kitchen and in a split second, Seb is awake.
"Sorry, dropped the lid. Be out in a mo."
Jim's Irish brogue must be coming back to haunt me, he thinks, still halfway in his dreams. He must be hallucinating, for that beautiful man standing before him can't be real, can he? He's been gone for so long. Three years without him. They have told him Jim was dead, but Seb steadfastly refuses to believe them. Jim always has a trick up his sleeve. Always. He is clever, cleverer than even Sebastian knows. So, is this really Jim then?
Three long years without Jim. Without that manic glint, those endearing eyes, and all that dashingly clever scheming. Sebastian's fingers had itched to pull the trigger of the sniper in his hands. This time though, it would've been pointed at his head. And he had been so ready to go through with it, driven mad by too many un-replied messages on his phone and living in a too-big London flat all by his lonesome.
And now he knows he's got silent tears streaming down his face, his eyes must be staring at Jim with a look of disbelief. That the man he loves is back from the dead. And back in his flat.
It's too good to be true. In those three years, Sebastian never stopped calling, never stopped texting him. But it broke his heart, or what was left of it at least, every time that tinny voice replied: "This Number Is No Longer Available."
And now those strong, familiar arms are wrapping around him, holding him, and steadying him as his body racks with suppressed sobs he didn't even know he had. And if the sobs are of happiness or of madness, Seb doesn't know.
"Honey, I'm home." Jim whispers in his ear, his warm breath ghosting over Sebastian's skin.