Chapter 1 – Now or never
Author's note – This is my first fanfic to be published, so be slightly nicer with the hate comments, okay? I hope that this isn't pure rubbish. Also, I recommend reading this on your computer, because I have included a few links to YouTube songs that might match the story you're about to begin. The music is additional, but it helps with the atmosphere. Chapters published about once or twice a few weeks, and hopefully this will be a long story. Enjoy your reading and please, be patient.
(Hints to better experience; try to balance your reading speed to the rhythm of the music, it gets better. Promise. Don't rush through the chapters, I still want to keep the feeling up and ruining it by rushing is way too easy.)
[ watch?v=asV0447SywY ]
His hands are shaking, which is rare for someone like him. Usually he knows exactly what to do, and if he doesn't, he just gets it over with as quickly and simply as he can.
This time he has to do something he's never done before. He'd been planning to do it someday - of course he had, it was part of the deal - but he'd never realised just how soon someday would be….
He stares blankly ahead of him. His icy blue eyes always look dead, eerily devoid of emotion - but right now, the barest traces of horror and shock linger within their depths, betraying his fear. Having to kill someone for real… he'd always wanted to try it, he's seen it happen plenty of times. But now that the chance is right in front of him, looking so helpless and afraid, he feels a hollow, sick feeling in his stomach, and is struck by an insecurity unlike anything he's ever felt before. He just doesn't know if he can do it… especially in the sick way he's been instructed to do it.
Having to capture an innocent person, hold him as a prisoner and torture him to death... Well, it is rather exciting, as his boss would say - yet so scary. So wrong but still so right.
He has to try it. He mustn't fail his boss… No, he can't fail him, this gorgeous man standing at his shoulder; this man who happens to be not only his boss, but his lover. The one person who means everything to him. The right one - the one.
The person who, he reminds himself, doesn't ever want to see him fail. The spider at the centre of the criminal web which he'd flung himself into, just to get closer to him, to be like him… And now he has to do him proud.
Failing is the very last option, he tells himself fiercely. No - failing isn't an option at all at this point.
He closes his eyes and focuses on the scene, sharpening his senses and bringing himself back to the task at hand.
The prisoner has to be kept in pain, he reminds himself first. He opens his eyes and looks around him, the cold tinges of rationality putting everything in a new light. It's still the same huge warehouse, the same whimpering prisoner, bound to a chair in the middle of the empty space – but everything feels somehow more…surreal. Like a game he needs to win, nothing more. The wind howls outside, the dark clouds pregnant with promise of rain. It looks and feels like the middle of the night, but it's only midday. So many more hours to kill.
He closes his eyes again and concentrates harder. He imagines the scene as far as he can, visualising everything in such vivid detail, the blood splattering upon the cold, hard floor, the prisoner's muscles straining and his mouth gaping open in agony – I can do this, he tells himself, it isn't that bad after all - but then he remembers that he's only imagining, only guessing as to how things could turn out. It could be far worse. He could lose his resolve, he could fail his lover...
He tries harder, resuming the vision in his mind. Hearing the wind scream outside brings a small smile to his lips, despite himself. Storms have always made him feel calm, though he doesn't quite know why – perhaps the sheer potency of the rain hammering upon him, the forces battering everything in their wake, so much tiny yet glorious destruction -
Suddenly and unexpectedly his deep thoughts are interrupted by a soft touch upon his scarred right shoulder.
"Forgot about reality again, Sebby?" Jim Moriarty gently asks.
He jerks beneath the touch, his heartbeat racing but quickly calming at the familiar voice. "Please don't call me that," he murmurs in reply, keeping his voice low and steady. "Sebby is your sniper; I'm the other one. Your pet. The name's Seth, remember?" Seth turns to his right-hand side, meeting Jim's intense gaze with a wry half-smile.
"I have trained you well, though. 'Pet' is the correct term indeed." The criminal pauses, pursing his plump lips. "But there was just one teensy little mistake: I…"
Seth finishes his sentence for him, in a mocking, exaggerated Irish drawl. "'…Am your boss, and I treat you however I like, I call you whatever I like, and if you do something wrong, I have full permission to kill you.'" At Jim's satisfied, affirmative smile, Seth rolls his eyes and continues. "I do remember your requirements, no need to constantly remind me of them." His voice is layered with sarcasm, his smile twitching into a smirk.
"Oh honey, don't make that face," Jim purrs sweetly. "It makes you look even sexier than you usually are." Seth laughs at that – one single, quiet laugh.
"Now, you have one job to do and I'm not letting you go anywhere before you've finished iiiit," Jim reminds him, his voice rising into his typical sing-song chime at the end. "But since you're just a bit more special, I'm not going anywhere either." His dark eyes flash with warning. "You'd better get it done quickly; I've no intentions of staying here for too long."
"Yeah, just don't call the police…" Sebastian replies with an amused snort, trying to ignore the rising tendrils of panic in his chest as he trains his focus back on his victim. The thunder blasts outside and, at last, the rain begins. Seth forces a smile, letting that bring him strength; and he allows the terrifying glint of madness to begin slipping into his eyes.
"You know, Jim," he begins, with a note of manic carelessness in his deep voice, "the storm helps bring a nice creepy atmosphere to this crime scene." With a burst of inspiration, he wraps slender fingers around the handle of a curved, gleaming knife hanging on his belt.
Jim sighs disapprovingly from behind him, stepping back. "Tut, tut. Are you really going to make the beautiful cuts that'll bleed your prisoner to death… with that thing?" Seth hears his footsteps ringing through the deserted room as his boss ambles away from him, calling over his shoulder. "Don't be a disappointment, dear; I don't want to have to kill you yet…"
Seth turns to Jim, now leaning casually against the weapons table, and raises a cocky eyebrow at him. "I know you'd never kill me with your own hands, so there has to be someone else with us here. Am I right?"
"Well of course I wouldn't do it!" Moriarty laughs, before adding darkly, "Sebastian would, though." His tone grows high-pitched and musical again. "The question is; which one of you?"
"I love your riddles," Seth remarks dismissively, before turning at last to join Jim. The prisoner lets out a forbidden gasp of relief – or at least tries to, around the strip of masking tape gagging him.
"You there," Seth snaps at him immediately. "You're going to die anyway, so don't even think it's over." His voice dips even lower, to a menacing snarl. "We haven't even begun yet."
Jim moans in mock ecstasy. "Oh, your voice sounds so sexy like that," he groans in the thick Churchtown accent Seth loves. "You wouldn't mind talking like that more often, would you?" With a sly grin, he whips a surgical switchblade from his pocket, brandishing it before his 'pet'.
Seth glances down at the underwhelming weapon, nods hesitantly and grasps the handle. Jim smirks and tugs the blade towards him, Seth stumbling closer too.
Jim brings his face leeringly close to Seth's and twists his lover's head a little so he could easily kiss his cheek. Instead, though, he whispers: "We haven't spoken of your reward yet, but I believe you'll enjoy it..."
Seth turns his head so his and Jim's lips are almost touching. Seth breathes his answer to the criminal's parted lips. "Let's not get too pervy, even though it suits you very well."
Jim snakes a hand into Seth's trouser pocket, slipping the blade there himself, before planting a brief, tantalising kiss upon his lips. Seth smirks, momentarily satisfied, and steps backwards. Turning his back to Jim, he walks back to his prisoner... who begins to tremble.
[ watch?v=9ylVRGttEW4 ]
Seth stares at his victim for a while, carefully committing every tense and terrified feature of him to memory, before finally grasping the blade. The prisoner desperately tries to beg him to stop, but because his mouth is tied so tightly shut, it sounds like nothing more a muffled cough.
"The urge to kill is… rising." Seth growls, craning his head to a creepy-looking, slightly crooked angle. He's filled with a newfound confidence and pulsing with an addictive power he's suddenly finding harder to control.
"That's my boy…" Jim hisses from the shadows.
Sebastian calmly brings his blade to his victim's wrist and, his free hand keeping it firmly still, makes one deep, vertical cut. The poor man's crimson blood wells up and begins to drip from the wound. Ignoring his violent, terrified shivers, Seth strokes the prisoner's body with the blade, casually adding more swivelling cuts to his arms and face as he goes along.
"Ooh, what a nice carotid artery you have there…" He halts as he reaches it, the point of the blade dancing upon its winding path. "It'd be a shame if I just…" Seth trails off, placing his index finger near the tip of the blade and using it to give it a slight push. It sinks satisfyingly into the man's soft white throat. "…Made it bleed…"
The last word curves his lips into a maniacal grin; and suddenly he's beyond all control.
Eagerly, he presses harder, the blade's point tearing through the tender skin with unconcealed relish. Keeping it there, Seth stares greedily at the liquid that streams from the fresh wound, spilling onto his pale hand like warm, rich red wine. Tugging it back out, he brings the blade to the very base of his victim's throat, to the place where all the shadows meet, carving in another deep incision and letting a hysterical burst of laughter break free from his lips. The next cut he makes is at a critical place; the prisoner stiffens, face contorted as though screaming, before growing drained of colour, lips turning blue in sheer terror and agony. Seth takes a step back, breathing heavily, heart and mind racing. There's blood everywhere, all over the floor and all over him and its metallic tang is thick and tangible in the air and fills him with unimaginable frenzy. He was about to stab his victim to death, but no – he stops himself. He will leave him suffering instead.
Sebastian continues to stare at his victim - who twitches wildly, blood pumping messily from the deep hollows all over him - with an awful ear-splitting smile he can't keep off his face.
Oh, the prisoner won't have very long now.
He feels a crashing, overwhelming sense of victory. I did it, his heart sings. I did it at last.
And in the end it was so easy.
A heartless murderer, that's what he'd be. The moment this man's soul left his body he would be just as cold-blooded, as ruthless as his two older brothers. He's just as much of a genius as they are, of course, but he's nothing like them. He never has been, although god knows he tried, once.
Before he met Jim.
And Jim showed him a new world, one where he could be everything his brothers would never dare to be, one where they could never follow him, where he would have no one but Moriarty beside him.
So of course he joined him there.
And in the end, isn't Jim all he needs?
His gaze riveted on this bleeding man whom he's turned into a work of art, Sebastian Holmes finally feels at peace.
Because oh, how Sherlock and Mycroft would fear him now...