There's a running stream of wrong, wrong, wrong, surprisingly correct, wrong, wrong, what is this bloody basic algebra? running through his head, jaw clicked tight with tension and shoulders long ago clenched and hunched in what can't be good for his spine.
The fire has long since burned down to faint embers, and it's only with a particularly loud pop and crackle that Jim looks up, eyes red rimmed from exhaustion.
Jim's been grading papers all blood night, and the only reason he hasn't gone off in a fit of blind rage is the half-bottle of scotch slung in his arm like his very best friend. He started writing with his left hand to give his right a respite, and maybe it's the long spidery handwriting that always naturally happens with the left, but there's a touch of paranoia in the air, spreading through and making his heart beat too fast.
Which, for James H. Moriarty, is not a good thing.
Where touches of paranoia can be felt with tantalizingly shallow presses, so too can the wings of madness gleam.
And, with that grim thought, Jim drops his pen onto the table and takes a long swig, grimacing. His mind is too much filled with poetry, it seems.
He gathers the half-graded mess of papers into his free arm, shutting them away in a folder with jerky, exhausted movements, sighing much more often than can conceivably be legal. A run through of his hair- and damn, he really needs to get it cut- and a quick glance around the room with narrowed brown eyes, and he's certain there's no reason for such wayward paranoia.
Damn. "'What immortal hand or eye could frame thy fearful symmetry?'" He murmurs to himself, the poem blooming into his mind quite suddenly and unexpectedly. Jim casts his eye about another moment longer, then shakes out of his reverie, throwing both scotch and folder back onto his desk and striding over to the fireplace.
He's low on firewood again. Have to venture out into the snowy wastelands and… Gah. That sounds like much too much work, and Jim shivers at the idea. Just looking outside can confirm such hesitation, as the forest around him conveys snowdrifts that would be waist high and likely dangerous to traverse. Hypothermia and frostbite are serious threats. Well, if he didn't have the glory of a well-insulated cottage, light and fire.
The new fire lights easy enough with the dry timber, but anything outside is bound to be soaked through now, after that blizzard. But for now, the nice warmth that glitters from the corner is enough to make him say 'later' to gathering anything new.
"Remind me, dear mindspace, to never decide to 'get away from society' again. Well, provided that it's during holiday and right before a god-damned blizzard." His voice is rough and scratchy from the scotch, and slurred just a tad too much to be his normal Irish lilt.
And maybe the paranoia's spread elsewhere, because he's talking to his head again. Lovely. An old habit that had died once the students stared at him a little too often, with too much of a weirded out look in their eyes that reminded him of childhood days.
Going from paranoia and William Blake to childhood taunts? Now that's a new low, even for a dull winter night. "Can't have us turning into The Shining, now can we? Then again, I never saw that movie, so maybe I'm getting it wro-"
He stops speaking as soon as he hears it, a dull thump coming from the front of the cottage, something too large to be a small rabbit, but not the crackle of a tree branch. If that makes bloody well sense, because it hardly does in Jim's head, either.
The hair on the back of his neck prickles and stands on end, goosebumps making him shiver despite the newfound warmth of the study. "Shite… I'm fecking well glad I haven't seen that many horror films…" He murmurs, trying to quell his rising paranoia-induced terror.
And it's stupid, it is. Just his head getting lonely and weird after being left alone for a week, wanting to find different noises and-
The mind thrives on stimulus and will concoct new stimuli if none are present. I know the younger children are fond of the 'Bloody Mary' game, but it is nothing more than staring at your reflection too long and your eyes playing tricks on you. Your brain gets bored, and tries for a change of pace. Hence, the distorted visual hallucination.
-And, honestly, now's not the time to be thinking of random facts. His professor voice. Gah. So utterly draining. But at least the rising bile in his throat has quelled and the white-fisted hands have gone lax.
Well, that is, until he hears another thump, this one quite obviously from the front door. Something large and… And there's the bloody handle being turned. Oh, shite. Fucking hell.
Jim locked it, thank whatever the fuck is keeping an eye on him in the heavens. "And when thy heart began to beat, what dread hand and what dread feet?" Oh, lord, the poetry's back, a low murmur of a voice as he moves towards the front of the house, grabbing the rifle from the closet before he's even thought of what the fuck he's doing.
Because, really? Going after the- murderer, rapist, thief, criminal- thing at the door is probably the worst thing that Jim has ever thought of. Ever. And he once got so drunk he woke up in the middle of a farm field with no pants.
But call him deranged, psychotic, idiotic… But. Jim's at least a little bit curious. And the dark, lonely flickers of the hallway are definitely not curious, unless he gets philosophical. And with so little alcohol in his system, he really shouldn't, unless the Existentialist Crisis of '98 should ever be repeated.
Jim shakes his head, trying to force himself out of his meaningless woolgathering. Honestly, the places his mind takes him sometimes. The rifle in his hand is sturdy, and he makes sure it's ready to go- has he ever fired it, come to think of it?- before he takes a tentative step closer to the door, listening for any movement.
There is none, but he just knows that whomever- whatever- is still there.
It's that handy prickle of paranoia from earlier that has risen like a goddamn flood in his throat, making it hard for him to swallow down the nausea.
The door holds no eye-hole, so as Jim steps closer to the door, hand grasped around the brass knob, he nearly falls back as whatever is out there tries to open it again.
"I've got a fecking gun, you know. I'm not afraid to blast your head away like the damned JFK assassination." He spits out. It's not as menacing as he means it when his voice is shakey and stumbling and so quiet.
The movement stops, though, and there's a soft… growl? But it sounds like its made from a human throat, and oh god, that just makes it all the more disturbing.
And… Oh, Mother of Christ, it started snowing earlier, didn't it? More snow on that blizzard, and whoever's out there is probably freezing and going to die. And whatever many of his old colleagues think of him, regardless of the rumours, Jim Moriarty is not a murderer. Well. Officially.
His curiosity is getting the best of him. Maybe the scotch has gone to his head. Maybe, maybe ifs and buts. That's all it is, excuses. There's his whole life in a nutshell. "Look." Jim starts, swallowing around the fear that's still there. It's easier than he expected because… Honestly?
Something growling out of a human throat is interesting. More bloody interesting than shoddy papers and the thought of gathering firewood. A mysterious stranger on his porch in the middle of a blizzard? Interesting.
"If you promise not to shoot my head off, I'll promise not to shoot yours. And I'll give you tea."
God, he's an idiot. Jim probes his mind for a second, trying to shut down as many wayward thoughts as he can, focussing his sole attention on that solid oak door. "And you can tell me all about why you're outside at this horrid hour."
There's another faint growl, and a grumble, some shifting around before, "Reinkommen?" The voice is so gravelly that Jim immediately knows the man- because that rumble of a voice most definitely belongs to a male- and hesitant, as though the owner isn't quite sure on what he's saying. As though words escape him.
Inside?
Rude manners, it seems.
The German is a surprise as well, all thing's considering, but it does make him think back to Grimm's Fairy Tales, and all the deliciously horrid things that happen quite when things go strange and awry. How every beautiful fairy tale in that book had great horrors- that were conveniently left out by Disney, no less- to accompany the lessons.
Jim shifts his feet from side to side, trying not to let his mouth break into a fern-coil of a grin, because that would make him seem sadistic. To let a gravel-toned stranger who found his home in the middle of the night inside? Idiotic. But to smile at the prospect? Masochistic. He must have a death wish.
"Ahh. Deutsch?" He replies, and without another moment to think through his life choices, to stop himself from being an idiot, he unlocks the door and tugs it on its hinges inwards, letting in a sharp chill of wind and snow and- "Fuck, that'll melt all over the floor…" And really, now's not the time to be worrying about the wet snow when…
Blinking at the open doorway, he trails his eyes down, down, until they land on an auburn-coloured head, hair natty and filled with snowflakes. So it is a man. A human man. But he's sitting on his haunches, and as he turns his head upward, Jim's breath is sucked away.
There's a flash in the darkness- too many teeth, too straight, too many- of white teeth against a pale face, the glint of grey-blue-green-gold eyes piercing for just a moment before the figure has drawn back, just a shadow against the forest background as he stands from his haunches, tall and slim and fucking beautiful. No. dangerous. That's what he meant to say. Fuck.
"Oh… Oh my. 'Tiger tiger burning bright… In the forests of the night…'" Jim mumbles to himself as he regards the stranger, the feral eyes and wary stance reminding him immediately of the beast. "Good lad, William Blake…"
Author's Notes
This is really just an un-betaed story drabble that popped into my head today. I don't know if I'll continue with it. If you like it, though, please review? Love and thanks. xo
