The painting sitting on his bed doesn't surprise Sebastian as much as it should. He runs his fingers over the framing lightly, admiring the texture, and thinking how strange it was that the only thing he and Jim had ever fully agreed upon was that Van Gogh's Skull was his most underrated piece.
"Do you like it?" Jim whispers in his ear as they stand in the museum.
"Yes."
"Do you want it?"
Sebastian tilts his head to the side, runs his hand slowly over Jim's ass, and smiles slyly over his shoulder the guard who stares at them, shocked. "Yes."
Jim stands on his tip-toes and runs his tongue over the shell of Sebastian's and chuckles darkly. "For your birthday," he says. "If you're good."
"I'm only as good as you allow me to be, Boss."
His fist goes through it easier than expected, ripping the canvas clean in two. He hurls the painting at the wall, its frame splintering on impact. Sebastian lets out a wail of bottomless despair, anguish, anger, and dark hatred.
He can't do that! He can't just go and do something so wonderful, so personal, and then not be here. It isn't fair! He can't just make Sebastian feel so amazing, so worthy, so loved…and then die.
He pulls himself away from his room and drags himself upstairs. Jim's room is exactly as he left it. Meticulous. Everything in its place. He knew this room as well as he knew – had known – the man who lived in it. There was a handgun behind the headboard and a knife in his pillow. In the closet were an array of Westwood suits, one for every occasion, and matching shoes directly beneath them; polished to a shine. In the bedside table, behind a hidden panel, was a small box. Inside that box were the only sentimental items Jim allowed himself to keep: his mother's wedding ring and Sebastian's dog tags. He pulls them out, slipping the ring inside his pocket and the dog tags over his head.
People said Jim Moriarty didn't have a heart. He did. It was small and it was fragile but it was the only thing in the world Sebastian had ever had for himself. Now it was gone and there was nothing, no amount of money or pain or death, that would fill the hole it had left.
In the morning he would leave, wrap the shredded remains of that painting in one of Jim's Westwood suits and tie it up with his favorite tie, sacrificing vital packing space for sentiment – Oh, how Jim would have laughed at him! – and leave the country.
But for now he stripped down and crawled between the sheets of Jim's king sized bed and pressed his nose deep into the pillows. Rolling onto his back he pulls out the knife hidden there and admires it in the moonlight.
He carves Jim's initials on his chest, just over his heart, letting the blood run down the sides of his chest where it paints the crisp white sheets the color of his broken soul and, for a moment, he fancies himself an artist.
It would serve as a reminder, after the painting had crumbled to dust and his suit smelled even less like him, that Jim Moriarty would always be the only man he had ever loved.
A/N: The painting mentioned is Vincent van Gogh's Skull. It's a personal favorite.