(I rewrote the last chapter, so go back and reread it before this one. :) )
Oh how wonderful! :) Another new chapter!
I also want to address the fact that the reason that it takes so long for this story to get out is because I don't really have the plot fleshed out in a few places. I have solid ideas and plot devices but getting there is sometimes a small problem. And the relationships in this are terribly complicated, so I hate to just rush these things and miss out on the depth. So my deepest apologies.
But I would love to hear you guys' ideas on what should happen. Because I'm open to almost anything, and would love to get chapter prompts. It would probably get the chapters out faster if I have an idea and premise. :) So PM or review your ideas!
Warnings: Ooh, actually No! This is a pretty clean chapter. But don't worry angst fans, because its about to get dark in here...
They say a single room can tell volumes about a person.
But that could all be bullshit, because Sebastian never got a damn answer about James Moriarty when he looked at the consulting criminal's living space.
The furniture was expensive and lavishly beautiful, mostly silvers and marbled colors, with undertones of grey and charcoal. Impersonal almost, Moran had mused, if not for the photographs adorning the room. The pictures on the walls were of family members Sebastian had never met or even heard about, their eyes empty, faces full of smiles. Many of them were of different people, old couples, young children, parties, gatherings. But there was only one woman who was in almost every single one, with the same smile lines Jim has when he is truly delighted in something, her hair as dark as her eyes, and Sebastian knew it had to be Jim's mother. But there were no pictures of a younger James Moriarty, and all the other people in the photos seemed to be no one in particular.
He stared for an extra moment or two, glaring stiffly at the wall of frames and then looked away, knowing that he wasn't Jim's genius, he couldn't tell their patters and routines of daily life written in their wrinkles, or their habits in their postures.
He wasn't Sherlock Holmes.
But Sebastian could tell that Jim wasn't feeling well, and as he dared a step closer to his boss's slumped, still form, he could tell that something wasn't right.
"Sebastian, don't you have a doctor's appointment?" The cold voice churned his empty stomach as his hand rested on Jim's shoulder, kneeling under the weight as Jim pinned him with a disarming look.
He noticed that Jim had been running his hands through his hair, scuffing the fringe up just a bit, making him look a little younger in his impeccable suit and tie. 'He hasn't slept in days. Must be about-' He stopped mid thought and shook his head. "John's already called Mycroft, and has surrounded himself with those brats Sherlock had working for him round the city. I'll have to lay low for a bit maybe we could-" But Jim didn't let him finish as Moriarty jerked away, teeth bared as he rested his elbows on the desk, hands in his hair again.
"I want him now, Sebastian, what part of that do you not understand?"
Some awful, scathing emotion boiled in Moran as he stood, eye brows creased angrily, fists braced on the desk predatorily as he looked down at his boss. "I'm sorry that I'm not quite sharp enough to avoid the entire fucking British Government, who you pissed off might I remind you!"
"Whom." Jim corrected flawlessly in his pent up anger, or at least Sebastian had guessed was anger, because Jim had that crease where his right eye brow dented his forehead, which usually meant that someone was one snap of the fingers away from an acid bath or a sudden dismemberment. "And quit with that language, you know how I hate when you use that barrack's mouth." He commented offhandedly, releasing a bored sigh and leaning back in his chair, deflated almost as if Sebastian had popped a hole in his thought process. His eyes closed for a second, then reopened with the same, vacantly wistful gaze that the woman in the pictures had, as if Jim was brooding softly over something, playing the scenarios in his mind and seeing that none of them were going to end his way. But he didn't make a sound as he straightened his posture, and inhaled deep and long one more time.
"Jim?" Moran questioned, almost giving up his ruffled mood as he watched his boss deduce him with those diamond rough eyes sharply taking in the angles of his jaw (Exactly two levels from pissed off),scanning his creased clothes (Its laundry day),the tension in his neck and shoulders (Has been scoping out the target, but hasn't, no, can't take the shot yet), the menial tremor in his fingers (?).
He suddenly wondered in a breath taking, wicked slip of rumor, if Jim could read the emotions in his eyes, maybe could recite his thoughts to him as if lines out of a fairy tale.
If he could, he never told Moran.
Never acted on it.
"You are ordered to quit seeing the woman." Was all he said acridly and Sebastian had to force himself from rolling his eyes. "Irene Adler is no longer an accomplice, understood?" Jim didn't turn his face to look up at him, only flicking his irises up to watch as Moran gave a final, small nod of recognition. There was a compelling, wistful moment of uneasiness that welled up then, like ice water filling a bath tub to the rim.
"I will always be here, Boss." Was all he said, though an entire book of words came rushing to him then, and with a tender hand on his shoulder, Sebastian hoped that Jim was clever enough to see love, adoration, something, anything in his eyes.
But there was no reassurance, no answer to the sworn testament. Just a pair of eyes trapping the ex-soldier for a brief second and flitting back down at the papers scattered in front of him. "Jim." He tried to pull his attention back, but was disdainfully ignored.
He had been given orders, and as a soldier should have left to do his duty. He was expected to let his Boss sit in his privy room and mind his own business (he had quite a lot of it too), but he couldn't just let the greatest man in all of London, the dark angel that had dragged him from the dregs of society, sit and destroy himself silently. Because that's how James Moriarty worked, just like the woman in the pictures.
Sat with a smile and a broken soul no one cared to peel back and comfort.
"I told you to leave me alone." He whispered with such a dark, demented dare that Moran fought not recoil back and rethink all his life choices. Jim had given him enough chances to leave the room without a missing limb, but Sebastian felt oddly auspicious today, and pressed irrevocably forward.
"Why won't you let me help you?" When had his voice sounded so gruff, dangerously on the edge of some primal feeling? And to be honest, Moran wasn't sure what he was doing as he pulled his hands from Jim's shoulders and clasped them around his bare neck, thumbs pressed up into his windpipe, feeling his slow pulse begin to pound, feeling Jim swallow, as if to show Sebastian the amount of power he held at this moment.
'I could kill him right now.' Sebastian's brain began to spiral into smoke. 'He is human. He is just like the rest of us. I could break his neck and he'd really be dead.' The fleeting, macabre thought shattered everything in him then. His head was swimming in a dense, choking fog as he slipped his fingers up to cradle Moriarty's head, thumbs still pressing softly against the tin, fragile windpipe, and he wondered what Jim felt, wondered if he was fighting the lust in him like Moran was, wondered if his eyes were as clouded as his mind as he felt his trembling finger tips brush the strands of his hair, closed them a bit tighter before he let go completely, and just stared at the debauched Jim.
He finally noticed that his boss's first few shirt buttons were undone, hair mussed, a soft red flushing his neck to the tips of his ears, while Jim licked his lips slowly and finally cocked a smooth eye brow at Sebastian.
'He knows…' Sebastian surmised, almost terrified as he watched for Jim to react. To yell at him, to threaten him, to break the stone faced façade he had adopted after his 'suicide'. Old Jim would have laughed out loud in a 'You normal people are soo adorable' way, maybe even flirted back in a sagacious, perceptive manner, but New Jim just sat there and studied him, before a slow, almost genuine, smile dented his laugh lines.
"How fascinating." His oily, seductively fallen voice stated. Jim reached a hand out to Sebastian as if he saw he was drowning and needed to be anchored by a constant force. "When our dear Johnny boy is in danger, his hands go completely still." Moran swallowed difficultly around the thickness behind his chest as Jim's cold, clever fingers found his own rough ones, his ink stained thumb pressing deeply into the flesh of Sebastian's palm. "But yours," he tugged the hand up to his lips and kissed the rugged, scarred knuckles with dry lips, eyes down cast as he continued in a low, addled murmur. "Yours get fidgety. Trigger happy."
Those dark, emotion blown irises shot through Sebastian as his boss brought his hand again to his neck and looked up, unbidden, wholly wondering and gentle suddenly, and Sebastian tried to breath the best he could as he again felt the intentional swallow as Jim coaxed at him with that tampered, vexing expression. "Nervous?" Jim asked thickly, and Moran shook his head softly, speechless with his new power stance.
"I trust you, Bastian." Was all he countered weakly then, and before Moran sank down for their first kiss, all he could wonder was how far he was willing to go in order to keep that honor?
I have this head cannon that Sebastian is constantly warring between the little piece of his conscious that is left and the need to please someone, who in this case is Jim Moriarty. I also adore the thought that Sebastian and Jim are still on two completely different levels of intelligence, with poor Sebby second guessing himself because he's always built Jim up to be this figment, untouchable GOD, so when he finally gets to see vulnerable Jim its unsettling, almost shattering his reality.
In return, Jim is constantly being proven wrong with Sebastian's undying loyalty for little in return. Its odd to him, and makes him press at the relationship like a fresh bruise, until finally all of this uncertainty bleeds out and the two of them stumble into this.
Whatever the hell "this" is.
Hahaha, its late, I have to go to bed.
What do you guys want to see next? Mycroft? Sherlock? Irene? Greg maybe? More John and Company?
Review and OM my pretty darlings!
-Your loyal writer,
Castion and Clockwork.