For all his instability, for all his theatrics and his melodrama and the anger that shakes through his body like he is the skeleton frame that conducts all the lightning in the world, Jim Moriarty is a rock, an anchor, or at least he is for Sebastian Moran. And Sebastian doesn't know what that says about him, but then, he hasn't really known anything about himself since he was fifteen and studying and something in his brain decided to crack.
He has remodeled his life, of course, brought it back together into some kind of tidy, from the outside at least, but on the interior there was always the grounding point that was Jim, with all his brilliance and his fire and his fallen angel act that always seemed more honest than anything Sebastian knew.
And there were days of guns, because Sebastian's hands were steady where his mind no longer was, and Sebastian knows death like the taste of explosive on his tongue, like he knows candlewax dripping across his flesh, slow, torture, knows death like he knows kissing Jim until air seems like nothing more than a distant memory, necessity to mortals and mortals alone.
There were days of guns, and those were good, because through it all there was Jim, and where Jim was there was a plan, and Sebastian could appreciate that because, for all its cleverness, it could change, and Sebastian knows his faults and he thinks that if Jim had gotten to him earlier, he might never have had to rebuild his life from shards in the first place. Jim understands that, and that's one of the reasons Sebastian loves him so much: never, in all the time they have been together, has Jim told Sebastian that it's stupid to spend so much time in pasts that have never been, even though Jim lives in the moment, every beating, aching instant of it.
Sebastian's love for Jim is as much a part of his person as anything else, is as integral to his being as gravity. Sebastian thinks, sometimes, that he would float away into nothingness if it weren't for Jim. If it weren't for his rock.
But then Jim died, on a day of guns that Sebastian had thought would be part of the plan except that it wasn't, and the genius of Jim's plans had always been when they knew to bend and this time they had only broken, and Sebastian knew in the second that he saw his stone shatter that he had been wrong, so incredibly wrong.
Sebastian feels himself falling, because Jim had been the opposite of gravity and there is nothing left to keep him standing.
In the time that follows, there are days of lights, and Sebastian remembers these, remembers them like he remembers the days in beds, all those different places with all those difference ceilings that began to look so alike after a while. He remembers days of not being able to focus, and he can't focus now, because the one thing that could keep his brain still and sharp is gone. He sees the lights and all he can think about is the person who doesn't.
He tries to distract himself, of course he does, but the thing about distraction is that all it really does is highlight what's not there, and his life is perfect, smooth around the edges, worn down away by chemicals and cold and so many hands that he held to his heart, but on the inside he is hollowed, gutted, weighted down by all the heart the world has ever thrown at him and Jim Moriarty ever tried to shield him from.
Because Sebastian Moran is a gun, ammunition loaded and safety off and as much of a danger to himself as to anyone else.
It is a night of lights and Sebastian is smiling because that's what people do and he's still alive and tonight he feels it, feels it bitter and twisting around his wrists, writhing in his muscles, raw angry animal sex and tonight he just wants to forget, because there are too many memories to carry around just now. His brain is alight too, sparkling in the rush of alcohol and adrenaline and every other good thing.
His clothes are tight against his skin, and the air is plastic-thick with the pulse of the music and if there is a Hell, then this must be what it feels like because Lucifer was an angel, and once you've fallen, why would you ever try to get up?
Speaking of Lucifer.
Sebastian's eyes have been scanning against the faces, gaze harsh and cold in the way that he never could be persuaded to unlearn. He looks through them, into the distance just beyond them, because that's where all the interest lives, and he is stalled when there is one that he cannot go beyond, and before he knows it he is walking, limbs striding out measures in a way that feels more right than anything else has in years, towards the man who Jim Moriarty had never quite destroyed.
That was the thing about Jim, Sebastian had learned in the days of guns, and moreover the days of quiet and talking and threats and standing behind his shoulders and watching from the dark behind his eyes. He talked big and he played pretty rough too, but at the end of the day, he didn't mind losing as long as it was spectacular, as long as it was for a good cause, as long as there were fireworks and he could clap and laugh and know that the world being clever was better than the world being his. In retrospect, Sebastian probably should have seen that, should have realized the kind of danger that would one day lead Jim to, but that had never seemed important at the time. Nothing really did.
This seems important right now, though, because Mycroft Holmes is standing with his umbrella by the corner, eyes closed but ears seeing, and the lights play over his face and he is so not a fallen angel because some people are just born to be the devil.
"Hello, handsome," Sebastian says, like by rote, and his voice is exceptional, just this once, for being clear as opposed to slurred, and Sebastian supposes that's why he likes places like this so much, why he likes the intoxication and the unthinkingness – among these people, he seems almost normal.
Mycroft opens his eyes, and there is a blankness on his face that Sebastian has felt in his bones before, and the colors that dance over his irises have more life than the man himself does in that one forever moment. "Hello," Mycroft says, voice thin as paper, and Sebastian has never wanted anything more since Jim than to tear Mycroft Holmes apart.
"Can I buy you a drink?" he continues, social formula, and it feels juddering and wrong on his tongue though immaculate in his ears, and he has always hated learning things by heart. It's an organ burdened quite enough.
"Why not?" Mycroft says, flat, rhetorical, and he seems less real than a robot, puzzle piece in the wrong factory and something inside Sebastian itches to whittle away at the man who runs the world until he fits.
So Sebastian buys the drink and they stop talking and Sebastian watches Mycroft carefully, watches him like a small child apt to get lost, and that is the wrong simile because Mycroft is already so blindingly gone, and if Sebastian had ever thought that Jim was his rock, then he is positively stable in comparison to Mycroft Holmes.
Sebastian sees more than he should. He always has, since before the days of guns, when there were just words and rules and the world could be reduced to its simplest terms, when everything could be written down and made right. Sebastian sees the way the other man holds the umbrella, sees the limp and the shoulders and the phone, conspicuous in its absence, and Sebastian has never been much of one for making plans, but one has popped into his head, fully formed.
He knows it's a terrible idea, knows this is a path that he's going to second guess his way down a thousand times in the future, if he ever makes it that far, but he doesn't think he has much of anything to live for anyway, by this stage, so he follows it. He is unmoored, set afloat, but if that's the case then Mycroft Holmes isn't even on this earth, so he might as well set about sharing this horrible kind of gravity.
Sebastian Moran wants to give Mycroft everything that Jim had given him, and then he wants to strip it away, inch by inch. He wants to destroy him, decimate him, turn him into less than nothing, because Sebastian Moran has always been a loaded gun.
This is fortunate, because Mycroft Holmes is looking to be destroyed.
Sebastian's hands are not shaking today, and they have not been shaking at all in the past few years, but this time it's different because Sebastian Moran is unanchored and that terrifies him and his mind is a jittering mess but his hands are steady because his hands are the only things he can trust in the hubbub that is this world and Sebastian's ears are ringing.
"Are you sure?" he's asking of Mycroft Holmes, and he thinks he should have been upset by the truth that is the man behind the mask except that he never was because he knew that no-one could ever have been anything after Jim, and the devil has never had a patch on the evils of humanity.
"No," is Mycroft's answer, considered and careless, cast away like so much ballast, and this is the first thing he has said that hasn't sounded like a formula.
"Goodbye," Sebastian says, because he'd never had the chance to say that to Jim, and his trigger finger squeezes, careful, and the sound deafens him.
The world settles and Sebastian's world is silence and he has never been happier since Mycroft because as he lets go of the sensation of the blood trickling over his skin he knows that he is being conducted straight back to Jim.
His anchor.
A/N: Based on a kinkmeme prompt in which destructive morcroft. I've decided I quite enjoy the concept.
~Mademise Morte, January 3, 2013.